Haerendel Gerhard (FORTH Honorary Fellow)

Research Fellow of the Institute of Astrophysics
Professor Emeritus , Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)

E-mail : hae@mpe.mpg.de

Personal webpage

Education :

Prof. Haerendel received his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Physics from the University of Munich in 1963.

Career :

In 1969 he became Fellow (Wissenschaftliches Mitglied) of the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik and in 1972 Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), from which he retired at the end of 2000. In 1990 he was appointed as the first FORTH Research Fellow. From 1994 to 2002 he was COSPAR president; from September 2000 - September 2005 he has been Vice President and Founding Dean of the School of Engineering and Science at International University Bremen (now Jacobs University). In October 2018 he received the honorary doctorate in physics of the University of Crete. Together with Yannis Papamastorakis, he is "founding father" of the Skinakas Observatory. He has published more than 300 papers in scientific journals.

Interests :

Prof. Haerendel has more than 50 years of experience in space research, including the function of P.I. of several international rocket and satellite projects such as PORCUPINE, Coloured Bubbles, AMPTE, CRRES, FREJA, and EQUATOR-S and as Co.I. on two instruments of the Rosetta mission. The sounding rocket work pioneered the application of the barium plasma cloud technique to various aspects of plasma and magnetospheric physics, e.g. theory and producing equatorial spread F, confirmation of auroral acceleration and Alfven’s critical ionization velocity effect, culminating in the creation of artificial comets in 1984 and 1985.