Ian Axford

Sir Ian Axford
Sir Ian Axford
Born	William Ian Axford; 2 January 1933; Dannevirke, New Zealand
Died	13 March 2010 (aged 77); Napier, New Zealand
Awards	Rutherford Medal (Royal Society of New Zealand) 1994; Chapman Medal (RAS) 1994; Fellow of the Royal Society
	Scientific career
Institutions	Cornell University (1963–1967); University of California, San Diego (1967–1974); Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy (1974–2001); Victoria University of Wellington (1982–1985)

Sir William Ian Axford FRS (2 January 1933 – 13 March 2010) was a New Zealand space scientist who was director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy from 1974 to 1990. Axford's research was focused on the interaction of the Sun with the magnetic field of Earth (magnetosphere) or the interstellar medium (heliosphere).

Life and work

Axford studied at Canterbury University in Christchurch for his double bachelor's degrees in science and engineering, followed by a double Master's in science with first class honours and in engineering with distinction, then undertook doctoral studies at the University of Manchester and received his PhD in 1960.^[2]

After a year at the University of Cambridge in 1960, where he played two matches of first-class cricket for the Cambridge University Cricket Club,^[3] Axford then joined the Defence Research Board of Canada, where he published one of his most cited papers: A unifying theory of high-latitude geophysical phenomena and geomagnetic storms, in 1961.^[4] He became a professor of physics and astronomy at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York in 1963. He later moved to the University of California, San Diego.

Axford became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy (since renamed the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research) in 1974.^[5] He held that position, with a short break in which he was Vice Chancellor of the Victoria University of Wellington from 1982 to 1985, until his retirement in 2001. The institute participated in the international missions Giotto to Halley's Comet, solar observatories Ulysses and SOHO while Axford was director of the institute. The science of all three missions had a strong connection to the activity of the Sun: SOHO and Ulysses monitored solar activity, and the Giotto mission was able to monitor the interaction of solar particles with Halley's Comet. Most of Axford's research was associated with the magnetosphere and the heliosphere.