Tor Hagfors (1930 – 17 January 2007) was a Norwegian scientist, radio astronomer, radar expert and a pioneer in the studies of the interactions between electromagnetic waves (radio waves) and a plasma. He was one of several theorists who developed the theory underlying incoherent scattering in the early 1960s.
Tor Hagfors was born in Oslo in 1930. He studied at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH), and he received his doctorate degree in 1959 from the University of Oslo. He worked at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment from 1955 to 1963, interrupted by a sabbatical at Stanford University from 1959 to 1960. He was employed at the Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts in two periods, from 1963 to 1967 and from 1969 to 1971. From 1967 to 1969 he was director of the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in Lurigancho, outside Lima, Peru. He was lecturing electrical engineering at NTH from 1973 to 1982, and in the period from 1975 to 1982 he also served as director of EISCAT, when the organization's facilities in northern Scandinavia were constructed.
From 1982 to 1991 Hagfors was director of National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center which operates the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and professor of astronomy and electrical engineering at Cornell University.
In 1992 he was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Lindau (Katlenburg-Lindau) in Germany, a position he held until his retirement in 1998. Hagfors was chairman of EISCAT Council from 1995 to 1996, chairman of the space science committee in the Norwegian Research Council from 1992 to 1997, and member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1995. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Tromsø, Norway, Nagoya University in Japan, and Lancaster University inn Great Britain.
Hagfors's research was very broad, comprising amongst other things ionospheric modification (heating), radar astronomy within our solar system, observations of planetary surfaces from space, techniques in radio remote sensing, scattering from rough surfaces, thermal fluctuations in complex plasmas, antennas and radio wave propagation. He published around 170 scientific papers.
Asteroid 1985 VD1 was named 7279 Hagfors in 2000.
Tor Hagfors died of a heart attack in Puerto Rico on 17 January 2007.
| Preceded by Don Farley |
Director, Jicamarca Radio Observatory 1967–1969 |
Succeeded by Ron Woodman |
| Preceded by New title |
Director, EISCAT Scientific Association 1975–1982 |
Succeeded by Murray Baron |
| Preceded by |
Director of National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center 1982–1992 |
Succeeded by Paul Goldsmith |
| Preceded by Ian Axford |
Director of Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy 1992–1998 |
Succeeded by Sami Solanki |