90th Birthday Celebrations

Jim Dungey at 90

Professor Jim Dungey, former Professor in the Blackett Laboratory, celebrates his 90^th birthday on January 30^th 2013.  He retired from the Blackett Laboratory 30 years ago but his pioneering and, often, maverick work in the 50’s through to the 70’s on solar terrestrial physics is probably more widely appreciated today than when he retired.

On January 10^th a Festival was held in his honour at the Royal Astronomical Society and was followed by a lecture in the Blackett Laboratory. Speakers included many of Jim’s old Imperial students as well as representatives of the present generation of researchers actively using Jim’s insights not just for ongoing scientific reasons but for the new practical forecasting discipline of Space Weather.  

In the evening at Imperial, a talk by David Southwood, former head of Blackett Laboratory, reviewed the long and convoluted history of our understanding of how the Sun and Earth were directly coupled. Starting from Balfour Stewart’s observations of major magnetic disturbances at Kew following Carrington’s observations of a white light solar flare at Redhill in 1859, it took over a century before Jim’s 1961 publication of his open magnetosphere model laid bare  the basic coupling mechanism.  However Jim, although inspired by data from the IGY (International Geophysical Year) in 1957 and early spacecraft, was way ahead of his time. It took another twenty years for the worldwide science community to accept his model as the standard.  Indeed, earlier in the day, ex-student after ex-student had spoken to thank him for his starting them “ahead on the track”.

The Royal Astronomical has further honoured Jim by inaugurating an annual James W. Dungey lecture.  The first Dungey lecture was given on January 11^th at the Royal Astronomical Society by Professor Peter Cargill, Senior Research Investigator in the Blackett Laboratory.

Students of Jim Dungey:

Jim Eastwood (Culham Electromagnetics), Maha Abdalla (Physics UCLE), Jeff Hughes (Boston University), David Nunn (Southampton University), Colette Robertson (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton), David Southwood (Imperial), Bob Strangeway (Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA).