Dr. Parker, he stated, was blissful when individuals identified a mistake in his calculations however not happy when individuals accepted prevalent scientific assumptions with out query.
“He had little endurance for ‘It’s well-known that …’” Dr. Turner stated.
Although Dr. Chandrasekhar, a future Nobel laureate, disagreed with Dr. Parker’s conclusions, he overruled the reviewers, and the paper was printed.
4 years later, Dr. Parker was vindicated when Mariner 2, a NASA spacecraft en path to Venus, noticed energetic particles streaming via interplanetary area — precisely what he had predicted.
When Dr. Zurbuchen joined NASA in 2016, the company had been working for years on a mission referred to as Photo voltaic Probe Plus, which was to swoop near the solar repeatedly. Dr. Zurbuchen stated he disliked the title Photo voltaic Probe Plus and wrote to the Nationwide Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Drugs asking it to recommend an individual to call the mission after.
The unequivocal response: Eugene Parker.
NASA had by no means earlier than named a spacecraft after a dwelling individual. However Dr. Zurbuchen, who had met Dr. Parker years earlier, stated he didn’t have a lot bother getting Robert Lightfoot, the performing administrator of NASA on the time, to approve the change in 2017. Dr. Zurbuchen then referred to as Dr. Parker to ask if that might be all proper with him. “He stated, ‘Completely. It is going to be my honor,’” Dr. Zurbuchen recalled.
Dr. Parker later stated he was stunned that NASA had requested for his permission.
A couple of months afterward, Dr. Parker went to go to the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory in Maryland, the place the spacecraft was constructed and examined. Dr. Fox, then challenge scientist for the mission, recalled saying, “Parker, meet Parker.”
The following yr, Dr. Parker and his household traveled to Florida to look at the launch of his namesake spacecraft.