Kristian Birkeland

Kristian Birkeland (December 13, 1867 - June 15, 1917) was born in Christiania (Oslo today) and wrote his first scientific paper at the age of 18. He organized several expeditions to Norway's high-latitude regions where he established a network of observatories under the auroral regions to collect magnetic field data. The results of the Norwegian Polar Expedition conducted from 1899 to 1900 contained the first determination of the global pattern of electric currents in the polar region from ground magnetic field measurements. The discovery of X-rays inspired Birkeland to develop vacuum chambers to study the influence of cathode rays on magnets. An example of one of his experiments is depicted on the left front of the bank note. It shows a magnetized terrella, simulating the Earth, suspended in an evacuated box. Birkeland noticed that an electron beam directed toward the terrella was guided toward the magnetic poles and produced rings of light around the poles and concluded that the aurora could be produced in a similar way. He developed a theory in which energetic electrons were ejected from sunspots on the solar surface, directed to the Earth, and guided to the Earth's polar regions by the geomagnetic field where they produced the visible aurora. Birkeland was nominated for the Nobel Prize no less than seven times.

References

External links

• The NOK 200 note with Kristian Brikeland (Norwegian)
• On Possible Electric Phenomena in Solar Systems and Nebulae, Extract from The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903

Notes

• Polar Magnetic Phenomena and Terrella Experiments, in The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903 (publ. 1913, p.720 on 'dark matter')
• Are the Solar Corpuscular Rays that penetrate the Earth's Atmosphere Negative or Positive Rays? in Videnskapsselskapets Skrifter, I Mat -- Naturv. Klasse No.1, Christiania, 1916.

Books

• Kristian Birkeland, The First Space Scientist (2005) by Egeland, Alv, Burke, William J.
• The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis (2001) by Lucy Jago

Articles

• Observation of Birkeland currents with the TRIAD satellite (1978), Potemra, T. A.
• Primary sources of large-scale Birkeland currents (1979), Sato, T.; Iijima, T.
• Field-aligned (Birkeland) currents (1985), Potemra, T. A.
• Birkeland currents in the earth's magnetosphere (1988), Potemra, T. A.
• The contributions of Kristian Birkeland to space physics (1997), Potemra, T. A.
• Birkeland, Kristian (1868-1917) (2001) Murdin, P. in Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Edited by Paul Murdin, article 5443
• More articles from the NASA Astrophysics Data System