[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXIV, Issue 13

[Newsletter Editor]

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXIV, Issue 13
Mar.03,2017

Editor: Peter Chi
Co-Editor: Guan Le
Distribution Support: Sharon Uy, Marjorie Sowmendran, Todd King, Kevin Addison
E-mail: editor at igpp.ucla.edu
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Table of Contents

1. O. Walter Lennartsson

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O. Walter Lennartsson

From: Bill Peterson (Bill.Peterson at lasp.colorado.edu)

We are sad to report that our friend and colleague Olof Walter Lennartsson passed away unexpectedly at his home in Los Altos, CA on February 2, 2017.  He was a great scientist and a good friend to the many people with whom he worked.  During his long and productive career he was a leader in unraveling the complex process that form the Earth’s magnetosphere. 

Walter was born on October 27, 1943 in the small village of Laxviken Sweden.  He attended elementary school in Laxviken and Föllinge.  While painting radiators during the daytime and observing the Aurora Borealis in the night skies of Northern Sweden, Walter knew that he wanted to learn more than the Jämtland Province could offer so he completed his high school education in Östersund, Sweden.  

He studied space physics from 1966 to 1973 at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) with space pioneers Lars Block, C.-G. Faellthammar, and Rolf Bostrom in the Laboratory directed by Hannes Alfvén. His thesis work addressed electric field and current distributions in the ionosphere. This work was one of the earliest to suggest large potential drops along auroral magnetic field lines. Subsequent work on the subject was published in several papers during the rest of his career. Walter’s early papers on the subject were controversial and have not yet been adequately recognized for their keen insights and pioneering nature.

In 1974 he began a NASA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Marshall Alabama Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, where he met his wife, Nancy Harris. They were married in 1978 and relocated to Palo Alto, California where Walter joined the Space Sciences group at the then Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories (LPARL)

At Lockheed Walter was the driving force behind the analysis of the energetic ion mass spectrometer data from NASA’s ISEE-1 satellite. He and many collaborators addressed the role of ion composition in magnetic storms, sub storms, geomagnetic pulsations, as well as the formation and dynamics of the Earth’s plasma sheet. Perhaps the best known paper reporting on this phase of his career is is 1986 paper with Ed Shelley, entitled “Survey of 0.1- to 16-keV/e plasma sheet ion composition.

Walter applied his keen analytical skills and insights, not only to improve the designs of several very successful space plasma instruments, but also the analysis and interpretation of the resulting data. Notable among those were the HERS instrument on the ESA Giotto Mission to Comet Halley and the TIMAS instrument on NASA’s Polar spacecraft

After 35 years of employment at Lockheed Martin, he retired in 2013.  

Walter is survived by his wife of 38 years, Nancy Lennartsson, his son Nils Lennartsson; sister, Ellen Hedström (Umeå, Sweden) and in-laws, nephews and nieces living in Alabama, Spain and Sweden. He will be deeply missed by them and his many research colleagues.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, March 4, 2017 from 2-4 pm at Bridges Community Church in Los Altos, California. 

In lieu of flowers please mail any memorial offering you chose to give honoring Walter to: Marshall County Christian Services (MCCS), P.O. Box 1463, Albertville, AL 35950

Ed Shelley  egshelley at earthlink.net
Bill Peterson bill.peterson at lasp.colorado.edu


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