Victor Francis Hess was a pioneering physicist renowned for his groundbreaking discovery of cosmic radiation. Born on June 24, 1883, in Waldstein Castle, Austria, he received his PhD from the University of Vienna in 1906, where Professor von Schweidler initiated him into the field of radioactivity. His academic career began at the Institute of Radium Research of the Viennese Academy of Sciences, where he worked under Stephan Meyer from 1910 to 1920, establishing himself as a rising star in experimental physics. Hess held prestigious positions at multiple Austrian universities, serving as Associate Professor at Graz University in 1920 and later as Professor at Innsbruck University from 1931, where he founded the world's first high-altitude laboratory for cosmic radiation studies on Hafelekar mountain.
Hess's most seminal contribution to physics came through his daring balloon ascents between 1911 and 1913, during which he made the revolutionary discovery that atmospheric radiation increased with altitude, contradicting the prevailing belief that radiation originated from Earth. By meticulously measuring radiation at elevations up to 5.3 kilometers, he demonstrated that this "ultra-radiation" must have extraterrestrial origins, thereby discovering what Robert Millikan later named cosmic rays. His findings, published in the Proceedings of the Viennese Academy of Sciences, fundamentally transformed our understanding of space and radiation, launching an entirely new field of physics. This pioneering work not only earned him the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics but also laid the foundation for subsequent discoveries of fundamental particles, including the positron discovered by Carl Anderson in 1932.
Despite the interruption of his research in Austria due to the Nazi regime's rise to power, Hess's legacy continued to flourish after he emigrated to the United States in 1938, where he became a professor at Fordham University and later a US citizen in 1944. His discovery inaugurated the fields of Cosmic Ray Physics and Astroparticle Physics, catalyzing decades of research that have profoundly impacted astrophysics, particle physics, and cosmology. Throughout his career, Hess made additional significant contributions to the understanding of radiation effects on the human body, developing methods for diagnosing radium poisoning in the 1950s. Today, his pioneering work remains foundational to modern space physics, with cosmic ray research continuing to yield insights into high-energy phenomena across the universe and serving as inspiration for generations of physicists who have built upon his visionary discoveries.
