Two-day CU seminar honors Peter Gierasch on his 60th birthday

By David Brand

Peter Gierasch, one of Cornell's most distinguished -- and unassuming -- scientists, who has almost "written the book" on planetary atmospheres, will be honored at a two-day seminar March 2 and 3. The two-day event is being held to celebrate Gierasch's 60th birthday.

Professor of astronomy Peter Gierasch, a leading researcher and educator in planetary atmospheres, will be honored at a two-day seminar, March 2 and 3, in Clark Hall. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

Known by colleagues as a "quiet" and "kind" man, Gierasch is an immensely popular figure in the astronomy department, where he has spent nearly 30 years as a leading international figure in his field and as an erstwhile administrator.

"Peter is truly one of the leading people who have developed almost everything we know today about the atmospheres of planets, other than the Earth," said Joseph Veverka, fellow astronomy professor and chair of the department.

On March 2, a workshop in 701 Clark Hall will be devoted to a discussion of data from Jupiter acquired by the Galileo and Cassini space missions. The daylong session, which is limited to specialists in the field, begins at 9 a.m.

On March 3, a symposium on planetary atmospheres will be held in 700 Clark Hall, to be opened by Philip Lewis, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The public is invited to attend. Among the speakers will be Andy Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology, who was a graduate student with Gierasch at Harvard University. Another leading specialist in planetary atmospheres, Conway Leovy of the University of Washington, also will be speaking.

Other speakers will include three of Gierasch's former students at Cornell: Steve Leroy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, who graduated with a B.A. in physics in 1988; Mike Smith of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, who earned his Ph.D. in 1995; and Tim Dowling of the University of Louisville, who worked under Gierasch as a postdoctoral researcher.

"Peter has trained a whole new generation of atmospheric scientists who are at the forefront of their field," said Veverka.

Gierasch was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Harvard, where he obtained his B.A. in physics in 1962 and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1968, studying under Richard Goody, now emeritus professor at Harvard, known as the father of the study of planetary atmospheres. For a year Gierasch worked as a research fellow at Harvard and then for three years as an assistant professor in the meteorology department at Florida State University. He arrived at Cornell in 1972 as assistant professor of astronomy. Over the years, he has been acting chair of the department and served for a decade as director of the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow from 1975 to 1979.

His space research has resulted in much new understanding about the dynamics and thermal structure of planetary atmospheres and a large new body of knowledge about Mars, Venus, Jupiter and the sun, much of it acquired through his association with several NASA missions. From 1973 to 1989, he was a member of the Voyager mission infrared spectrometer science team. He has been an interdisciplinary scientist with the Galileo mission since 1977 and a member of the Cassini mission infrared spectrometer science team since 1990.

Astronomy researcher Don Banfield, one of the organizers of the two-day event, gives one graphic example of how Gierasch's work has changed the view of the Earth's neighbors: "A lot of people like to imagine what it's like on other planets. He has taken mathematics and physics and carried them through to allow you to quantitatively understand what it might be like if you stood on a hillside on Mars in the afternoon. Would you have a dust storm blowing up? Would you have a breeze blowing down the hillside? That's the kind of thing his work has allowed us to understand."

Early in his career, Banfield noted, Gierasch concerned himself with climatic effects on other planets that only in more recent years have been acute causes for anxiety on Earth. In the 1960s, for example, he studied how radiation escapes from the bottom of the atmosphere on Mars, a sort of other-worldly greenhouse effect, well before the phenomenon was widely raising concern about rising temperatures on Earth.

Colleagues not only respect Gierasch for the quality of his science, said Veverka, but they also celebrate "his quality of extreme kindness." Said Veverka: "On only one occasion in my acquaintance with Peter over the years was he motivated sufficiently by someone's stupidity to actually offer a criticism in public. Generally his attitude is one of asking questions and guiding."

Gierasch also has a reputation as a teacher who believes in students getting a thorough grounding in the basics of a science. "He is excellent at explaining difficult concepts to small groups of people," said Veverka. He adds that because Gierasch is a very shy man, "he doesn't get the credit for being one of the famous lecturers in this department."