Eugene Parker, a physicist who theorized the existence of solar wind and became the first person to witness the launch of a spacecraft bearing his name, has died, his son and the University of Chicago said Wednesday.
His son, Eric Parker, said Eugene Parker died peacefully at a retirement community in Chicago on Tuesday, about a decade after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He was 94.
NASA administrators and university colleagues hailed Parker as a visionary in his field of heliophysics, focused on the study of the sun and other stars. He is best known for his 1958 theory of the existence of solar wind — a supersonic flow of particles off the sun's surface.
