Michael Hesse - Biography#

Michael Hesse got his PhD degree in theoretical physics from Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany, 1988. He held Director’s Postdoctoral Felloship (1988-1991) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, after which he moved to Hughes System Corporation in Maryland. In 1993 he was appointed as a senior research scientist in NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he held several research and managerial positions. His career at NASA culminated as the Director of the Heliophysics Science Division 2012-2016. In 2017 he moved back to Europe and became Professor of Space Physics at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Michael Hesse began his career with the theory of large-scale magnetohydrodynamic phenomena, such as the magnetic reconnection in the Earth’s magnetosphere. He soon became a world-leading specialist in numerical plasma simulations, and as a post-doc he expanded his expertise toward microscopic simulations utilizing particle-in-cell techniques. His outstanding publication record illustrates his success in applying these techniques to a wide area of key problems in space physics, often urgently needed in interpretation of spacecraft observations.

At Goddard Michael Hesse soon got managerial duties. One of the most important was as a Director of the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (1999-2012). It is a US multi-agency activity involving NASA, NSF, NOAA and several research laboratories of Air Force and Navy. Its duty is to provide the research community access to space science models. One of his major achievements was to create the Space Weather Research Center to provide space weather information to NASA’s robotic missions throughout the solar system.

As a professor in Bergen Michael Hesse continues his successful career in studies of plasma phenomena by means of analytical theory and numerical simulations, bringing most significant boost to Norwegian space physics research community. In his new role he has become an active teacher and student advisor.