In the face of rebuke by the scientific establishment, sabotage by a jealous rival, and his own battles with depression and paranoia, Birkeland remained steadfast. It is surprising that the genuine discovery of a scientist and inventor of such obvious eminence and importance has escaped attention until now.īirkeland’s pursuit took him to some of the most forbidding landscapes on earth, from the remote snowcapped mountains of Norway to the war-torn deserts of Africa. Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917) accomplished this by inventing two other scientific feats that were ahead of their time, the Birkeland-Eyde process of fixing nitrogen from the air and the electromagnetic cannon, which funded his research on the aurorae. Ex-TV documentary producer Lucy Jago came across Birkeland’s story while making the BBC series The Planets. Kristian Birkeland was the world’s first space researcher and put Norwegian physics on the world map.Īuthor Lucy Jago has written an excellent book on Kristian Birkeland, “ Northern Lights – The True Story of the Man who Unlocked the Secrets of Aurora Borealis”. It is 100 years since Norway’s most famous physicist and industry researcher died.
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