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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

As the Director of the Sun-Earth Connection Division, Dr. Fisher has overall responsibility for developing policy and providing guidance for NASA's program to understand the physics of the variable Sun and its influence on the heliosphere, solar system plasmas, the upper atmospheres and magnetospheres of planets, especially the Earth, and the origin of cosmic rays. Dr. Fisher was appointed as Director in March 2002.
Dr. Fisher graduated with honors, Phi Beta Kappa, in Mathematics from Grinnell College in 1961. After receiving his Ph.D. degree in Astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1965, he became a staff member of the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. Following that, he became a staff astrophysicist at the USAF Sacramento Peak Observatory, and later was a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder Colorado. He was a Co-Investigator on both the HCO SO-55 (SkyLab), and Coronagraph/Polarimeter (SMM) experiments. While at HAO he was the Project Manager and Principal Investigator for the Mk III project at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, Mauna Loa, Hawaii. He joined the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD in 1991 as the Head of the Solar Physics Branch. Principal Investigator for the SPARTAN 201 White Light Coronagraph investigation, he has served recently as the Payload Scientist for five Space Shuttle Missions (STS - 56, -64, -69, -87, and -95. He was the NASA Ultraviolet Coronagraph-Spectrometer (UVCS) Telescope Scientist for the SOHO Mission, the TRACE-SMEX Mission Scientist, and the Payload Scientist for the STS-87 Space Shuttle flight.
Prior to leaving the GSFC, Dr. Fisher was the Senior Project Scientist for NASA's Living with A Star Project, and Chief of the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics. Recent successful launches for projects within the Laboratory include the Microwave Anisotropy Mission (MAP) and the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager Mission (HESSI). Dr. Fisher is a life member of the American Geophysical Union, and a member of the International Astronomical Union and the American Astronomical Society. He is the recipient of both the NASA Exceptional Achievement and Exceptional Service Medals. Research interests include research on topics of solar magnetic evolution and the solar corona; especially as they relate to the physical characteristics and physical processes of the outer layers of the Sun and the impact on humanity and technology.