Eckart Marsch

Eckart Marsch
Theoretical physicist Eckart Marsch visiting his hometown Friedrichstadt (Germany), 2018
Born1 February 1947 (1947-02) (age 77)
NationalityGerman
AwardsFellow of the AGU (2009), Hannes Alfvén Medal (2018)
Scientific career
FieldsSpace Plasma (physics), solar wind and solar physics, physics of condensed matter, relativistic quantum mechanics
InstitutionsMax Planck Institute for Solar System Research (until 2012), Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel (since 2012)

Eckart Marsch (born 1 February 1947 in Friedrichstadt) is a German theoretical physicist, who worked from 1980 to 2012 at the originally named Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy, from 2004 on named Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Katlenburg-Lindau on the physics of the solar wind, solar corona and space plasmas and taught at the University of Göttingen.

In appreciation of his extensive theoretical, data-analytical and application-related research, as author of a large number of scientific articles and co-editor of several books on the physics of the heliosphere, heating of the solar corona, plasma physics of the solar wind and astrophysical plasmas, as co-editor of geophysical journals, especially of the well-known online journal Living Reviews in Solar Physics,[1] as member of a variety of scientific committees and reviewer of leading scientific journals, as lecturer and associate professor at the University of Göttingen and as a personal supervisor of a large number of doctoral students and young scientists, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna awarded him in the year 2018 the Hannes Alfvén Medal. "The Hannes Alfvén Medal goes to Eckart Marsch for his fundamental contributions to our understanding of the kinetic processes and plasma turbulence in the heliosphere, as well as to the work that has made Helios a successful mission and initiated the Solar Orbiter." As a theoretical plasma physicist, Eckart Marsch (often in collaboration with the Chinese heliospheric physicist Chuan-Yi Tu of the Peking University analyzed and interpreted in particular the extensive plasma and magnetic field data on processes in the magnetized solar wind, which were acquired over a decade using the HELIOS space probes between the Earth and the Sun. In the crucial initial stages he planned and coordinated the development of the ESA solar mission Solar Orbiter, which now is scheduled to launch in 2020. Eckart Marsch is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

As part of his diploma and doctoral thesis he had studied the physics of condensed matter at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel. After his retirement in 2012 he again works there, now as a retired scientist, among others topics on relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.

  1. ^ Living Reviews in Solar Physics. Springer nature Switzerland AG