Joseph W. Chamberlain
Joseph Wyan Chamberlain was an American atmospheric scientist and astronomer whose work shaped modern studies of the upper atmosphere and planetary aeronomy. He developed a kinetic description of the collisionless exosphere that is widely used to model atmospheric escape. He wrote the monograph Physics of the Aurora and Airglow in 1961, described by colleagues as a "classic book," and later the graduate text Theory of Planetary Atmospheres with Donald M. Hunten. He received the American Astronomical Society's Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy in 1961 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1965.
Chamberlain died at home in Tucson, Arizona, on April 14, 2004, at 75.
Early life and education
Chamberlain was born in Boonville, Missouri, and grew up in nearby New Franklin. He was the son of a country physician. He began college intending to study medicine then switched to physics after an early laboratory course. He earned an A.B. in 1948 and an A.M. in 1949, then moved to the University of Michigan for graduate study in astronomy under Lawrence H. Aller and department chair Leo Goldberg. He completed an M.S. in 1951 and a Ph.D. in astronomy in early 1952. His first publication with Aller reinterpreted peculiar A-type spectra and helped open a new line of work on metal-poor Population II stars.Career
In December 1951, months before his doctorate was conferred, Chamberlain joined the Air Force Cambridge Research Center near Boston to work on aurora and airglow. He made two winter expeditions to Thule, Greenland, where spectroscopy of the OH bands indicated a warmer polar mesopause in winter than at middle latitudes. These results stimulated his lifelong interest in the physics of the upper atmosphere.Chamberlain moved to Yerkes Observatory in mid-1953, first as a research associate and then as assistant professor. He became associate director of Yerkes in 1960 and in January 1961 was appointed professor at the University of Chicago, with a joint appointment in Astronomy and Geophysical Sciences. During this period he wrote Physics of the Aurora and Airglow, which colleagues praised as a "classic book" that earned him wide professional respect early in his career.
In October 1962 he accepted N. U. Mayall's invitation to build a space-astronomy effort at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson. He organized a rocket-astronomy program and an integrated group of observers and theorists. The division's "youthful spirit and rapport" became a hallmark of the program. In 1967 the unit was renamed the Planetary Sciences Division, reflecting its scientific focus. He chaired the committee that organized the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in 1969 and served as its first chair at the inaugural meeting in January 1970.
Chamberlain's best-known theoretical contribution is a kinetic model for the collisionless exosphere that distinguishes ballistic, satellite, and escaping particle trajectories. His 1963 paper "Planetary coronae and atmospheric evaporation" provided a comprehensive formulation that has remained a standard reference in escape theory.
After administrative turbulence at Kitt Peak, Chamberlain became director of the NASA [Lunar Science Institute] in Houston in 1971. He organized topical conferences and oversaw the review of lunar sample research, then in 1973 joined Rice University, where he served as professor of space physics and astronomy until his retirement as emeritus in 1990. At Rice he taught a graduate course that became Theory of Planetary Atmospheres in 1978. He invited Hunten to collaborate on a second edition, published in 1987.
Chamberlain received the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy in 1961 for significant theoretical contributions early in his career. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1965. He later chaired the academy's Astronomy Section and edited Reviews of Geophysics in the 1970s.