Richard Brice Hoover (born January 3, 1943) is a physicist who has authored 33 volumes and 250 papers on astrobiology, extremophiles, diatoms, solar physics, X-ray/EUV optics and meteorites. He holds 11 U.S. patents and was 1992 NASA Inventor of the Year.[1] He was employed at the United States' NASA Marshall Space Flight Center from 1966 to 2012,[2] where he worked on astrophysics and astrobiology. He established the Astrobiology Group there in 1997 and until his retirement in late 2011 he headed their astrobiology research. He conducted research on microbial extremophiles in the Antarctic, microfossils, and chemical biomarkers in precambrian rocks and in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Hoover has published claims to have discovered fossilized microorganisms in a collection of select meteorites on multiple occasions.