Kristian Birkeland belongs to the record of astronomy as one of those whose work outlasted the questions that prompted it.
Kristian Birkeland was born at Christiania in 1867. His recorded nationality is Norway.
The nineteenth century professionalised science. Laboratories acquired budgets, universities acquired chairs, and for the first time a person could be a scientist by occupation rather than by inclination.
He held appointments at University of Oslo, where the work centred on physics.
The work that carried his reputation furthest concerned theories of atmospheric electric currents that elucidated the nature of the aurora borealis. Astronomy is built from patience and arithmetic, since nothing it studies can be brought closer or repeated on demand.
Working from Norway shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
His work was formally recognised with the Commander of the Order of St. Olav and Fridtjof Nansen Award of Excellence, Mathematics-Natural sciences class.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Astronomy is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
Kristian Birkeland died in 1917 at the age of 50. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Held posts at University of Oslo
- Fields of research: physics
