Robert Lin, UC Berkeley pioneer in experimental space physics, dies at 70

Physicist Robert Peichung Lin, a former director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, who designed and built dozens of instruments to study solar flares, the magnetic fields on the surface of the moon and Mars and the plasma environment of Earth, died suddenly of a stroke on Saturday, Nov. Lin, 70, professor emeritus of physics, was working on at least four upcoming satellite and balloon experiments at the time of his death. He passed away at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley. According to Stuart Bale, UC Berkeley professor of physics and current director of the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL), Lin essentially invented the field of high energy space physics after he and the late UC Berkeley physicist Kinsey Anderson accidentally discovered that solar flares emit high-velocity charged particles that can be observed from Earth. "Much of what we know about astrophysical particle acceleration comes from X-ray and gamma-ray measurements that are based on underlying physics discovered by studying solar flares, much of it Bob's work," Bale said. Bale said that it is hard to pigeonhole Lin's field of study, since he excelled in many. Lin built satellite instruments to detect the energy of electrons and then put these electron reflectometers/magnetometers aboard the NASA missions Mars Global Surveyor in 1997 and Lunar Prospector in 1998.