A Path to Research in Space Physics

Success in research depends on multiple factors, many outside the control of an individual. I was born during the Great Depression, began school during World War II, and was 12 years old before I lived in a house with running water, electricity, or a telephone. In the second or third grade, I decided to be a scientist, and all my activities after that contributed to this goal. In this paper, I summarize a few early events and focus on my activities in the Ph.D. Physics program at Berkeley, and my first few years after graduation. Being well‐prepared, hardworking, self‐sufficient, and blessed by fortunate circumstances is important. However, good fortune is insufficient if you are not proactive. Once success seems to be within grasp, it is important to consistently promote your ideas and communicate them in lectures and publications. Space Physics research exploded the year I started my research providing abundant opportunities for discoveries. There were few competitors, and significant resources were available. I was fortunate to be educated at one of the first space research centers and find a permanent position at another. Circumstances have changed in the 60 years since I began research. The opportunities for quick discoveries and rapid recognition have moved away from my field of magnetospheric physics. New instruments, new methods of analysis, large amounts of data, and advanced modeling tools are needed to make incremental advances.

Plain Language Summary I briefly describe how I became interested in science and eventually became a professor at a research university.I was born and spent my childhood in very poor circumstances.My father's and grandparents' interests helped me to obtain a good education.My brother and I developed an interest in science early on.We had very good teachers in high school and were active in the Science Club.I managed to get through the University with high school savings, a job at Boeing Airplane Company, work at the campus wind tunnel, my new wife, and a major scholarship.I got a master's degree in physics at the University of Southern California with summer jobs at Boeing, North American Aviation, and Bell and Howell.I obtained my Ph.D. in physics at Berkeley.My research advisor was an exploration geophysicist, but one with a space physics grant that sent me to the auroral zone three times.The discovery of the solar wind and the concept of the auroral substorm set me on my path to a position at UCLA.I encountered many obstacles but had considerable help, found unique opportunities, and developed long-lasting relations with colleagues.10.1029/2022CN000190 2 of 9 My maternal grandmother was the librarian for the town of Manson.Her home was on a hill surrounded by a large apple orchard.This property had water, electricity, and a telephone with a family line.Two rings meant the call was for my grandparents.She was also head of the garden club and created beautiful gardens atop the hill.Every month for all my years in elementary school, she would visit our home up the Entiat River.She always took my siblings and me to the school house, whose third floor was a small library.Our grandmother gave each of us a small booklet to record the author, title, and brief review of the contents.For each book review, she would give us a nickel, which would buy an ice cream bar or a bottle of soda.We read many books!My favorites were about Og the Caveman.Og was an inventor of everything, spears, clubs, axes, arrowheads, and safe living spaces.I wanted to be like Og.
The schoolhouse 73 years after I left the valley is shown in Figure 2. The large tube on the side of the building was the fire escape from the library, but its main function was lunchtime play.We would climb the tube with our legs spread apart while other students slid down on the wax paper from their lunch boxes.Grades 4 and 5 were near the tube, behind the windows on the left, and grades 1-3 were on the right.
My father had wanted to be an electrical engineer but dropped out of college in his first year.His parents were teachers and principals of a school.Because of the Depression and war, my father had to maintain our vehicle and his logging equipment.My brother and I used to watch him in the garage.My brother and I received a Gilbert chemistry set from someone I do not remember.We set up a lab in the rafters above my father's workbench.We soon moved this to an abandoned chicken house.We did not have many toys, so we made our own.One of the most complex toys was a sprinkler tank for our stake bed truck.We had to start the blow torch to do the soldering required.We often found our materials by hiking several miles to the local dump.

Middle and High School
My father was injured in a logging accident several years after moving to the Entiat.He was forced to find another job and became the local distributor for the Spokane newspaper, the Spokesman-Review.After several years he was promoted to regional distribution manager, and we moved to Wenatchee.My brother and I became newsboys for the paper.Our profits were not great, but we used them to buy tools such as an electric drill, jig saw, and wood lathe.We continued to make our toys throughout middle school.At the end of the ninth grade, my brother and I made a large purchase from a chemical supply center in Seattle.Our goal was to build rockets.My maternal grandfather had always been interested in astronomy.Every summer, I would spend more than a month with my grandparents at their hilltop home.I helped my grandmother with gardening and discussed the 10.1029/2022CN000190 3 of 9 stars with my grandfather.By then, my brother and I had decided to be scientists.I was fascinated with astronomy, and my brother was with electronics.In high school, we became involved with the science and forestry clubs.I took mechanical drawing, wood and machine shop classes, and all available science and math classes.Eventually, we each became president of the science club and guided it for several years.In high school, we participated in a science fair.My bother built a computer from relays abandoned at the dump by the local telephone company.I built a ladder to the roof of our two-story house and constructed a platform with a pedestal to hold binoculars.My science fair project demonstrated optical principles with lenses made from plastic and mirrors.
The year 1953, my family purchased a television.My brother and I thought watching it would end our involvement in science and invention, so we moved out of the house into a cabin at the back of the property.We converted this into a bedroom, workshop, and laboratory.We began manufacturing gunpowder from potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal.We created rocket bodies from drafting paper, flour paste, and plaster of Paris.We launched them over the Columbia River several blocks from our home.We eventually created a detonating compound that exploded when the rocket burned the fuel at the head of the rocket.I spent 14 days in a hospital at the start of high school.I began school late, and one teacher suggested I drop out for a year.This suggestion upset me so much that I began a work schedule lasting until 2 a.m.every night.I continued this for the next 20 years or more.By the end of high school, I had decided I wanted to be a physicist studying electromagnetic waves.After graduation, I obtained a job at a frozen food processing plant.All summer, I worked nights 7 days a week.During the day, I began mountain climbing with a close friend.

College Years
At the end of my graduation summer, I started on a physics degree at the University of Washington.There were 75 of us.At college graduation, 4 years later, there were only 12. My accumulated savings of $1,000 were sufficient to pay all expenses for my first year, and I managed a second year by borrowing money.At the end of this year, the University told me I could not return without paying my debts.No funds were available from home as my father had passed away, and my mother had remarried and started a new family.The University told me my family was too wealthy to provide financial help.At that time, my stepfather was a garbage collector with a family of six children.
The lack of support from family or school led me to Boeing Airplane Company.They agreed to hire me provided I signed a contract to work for a full year.I started in June with two more years of college ahead of me.My first 10.1029/2022CN000190 4 of 9 assignment was calculating a fighter trajectory on a Smith-Corona mechanical calculator.This task was soon interrupted by the suggestion that I take a class in machine language programming of the first IBM 701 mainframe computer.
I created a series expansion of a sine wave and plotted it on a printer for which I had to write the driver function.In midsummer, my supervisor asked me to take another class in the newly invented language FORTRAN running on the next mainframe, IBM 703.During this fall, I could only take one class at the University.Come December; my supervisor called me in for the 6-month review.He asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.I told him I wanted to be a professor at a major research university.He replied, "You will never make it this way.Go back to school!"I replied that I could not do this as I had signed a contract with Boeing to work for a full year.He said, "I want you to understand that I am Boeing, and I am telling you to return to school!"I did, in January, and went to the job board at the Student Union.A job was available at the campus wind tunnel, but the candidate must know FORTRAN programming.The language was brand new, so there could not have been another student than me that fit this description.I got the job.Somehow 6 months with Boeing and this job were enough for me to finish my third year on time.In my last year, I married Kathyrn Rice, received a major scholarship, and was able to graduate.

Graduate School
In my last quarter before graduation in June 1959, I interviewed recruiters from 31 major corporations.I received 30 job offers!This time was the height of the Cold War, and physicists, mathematicians, and electrical engineers were in great demand.I did not accept these as I wanted to continue in graduate school.The Physics Department at the University of Southern California (USC) admitted me.That summer, I worked for the Boeing Plasma Physics Laboratory.The instruction for the 12 graduate students at USC was extremely good, but I discovered few research opportunities.In the summer after the first year, I worked for North American Aviation in the heat transfer group doing FORTRAN programming.The next summer, after receiving my MS degree, I worked for a summer at Bell and Howell in the design of a quadrupole mass spectrometer.I was then accepted into the Ph.D. program at the University of California Berkeley Physics Department.
Berkeley Physics was a different world.There were close to 450 graduate students in Physics.I also found that the courses I had taken at USC were completely unlike their counterparts at Berkeley.I had to retake most of them as they had completely different content.At the end of the first year, I found a job with Professor Charles Kittel, who was preparing a book to be a sequel to the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) high school physics course.He wanted someone to teach the PSSC classes at a private high school so that person could help him write the problems for the textbook.I did this for a year while still studying at the University.At the end of the year, I began searching for a research advisor.At this time, NASA had just created eight centers of excellence nationwide.Berkeley was one of these and received a new Space Science Laboratory, and its first Director, Dr. Sam Silver, started advising me.He recommended me to one of the laboratory members who had just received a grant to study ion cyclotron waves (Pc1 pulsations).Professor Stan Ward hired me to work on this grant.The unusual nature of this employment is that we were located in the Hearst Mining Building as Dr. Ward was an exploration geophysicist whose specialty was electromagnetic methods of mineral exploration.
During my first year, I worked on applying low-frequency electromagnetic waves to studying Earth's conductivity.The new technique was magnetotellurics (MT) because it used simultaneous measurements of low-frequency waves' magnetic and electric fields to probe the subsurface conductivity structure.To carry this out, I was part of a team that built a system with three search coils, two electric field sensors, and all of the associated electronics.Speculation at this time suggested that the Pc1 waves were created by bunches of electrons bouncing between the opposite ends of auroral zone field lines.I discovered that Dr. Kinsey Anderson was going to the auroral zone to fly balloons to detect electron precipitation, and I asked if I could accompany him.He agreed, and I took the new MT system to Flin Flon, Manitoba, in the summer of 1964.
Our expedition was not very successful.1964 was the minimum of the solar cycle, and strong auroral activity was scarce.Only one flight obtained good particle data during 6 weeks of measurements and nine balloons.What was important was the opportunity each night to observe the aurora and its relation to magnetic variations and low-frequency waves on the ground.I made copious notes on the chart records describing the relation of aurora to other phenomena measured by our system.After returning to Berkeley, my fellow graduate student 10.1029/2022CN000190 5 of 9 George Parks and I discovered a paper published earlier in the year by S-I Akasofu, The Auroral Substorm (Akasofu, 1964).This paper revolutionized our thinking and clearly described what we observed every night.A positive outcome of the trip was that I wrote my first paper describing the occurrence of Pc1 pulsations in the auroral zone (McPherron & Ward, 1965).There was no relation between Pc1 and electron precipitation.
The next year we rebuilt the MT system (Jepsen et al., 1969), and I again asked to take it to the auroral zone.I did, and George and I developed a procedure based on the substorm concept to determine when we launched balloons.We called an observatory in Iceland each night, and if they saw auroral activity, we launched a balloon.We were much more successful, and Parks obtained the data he needed for his dissertation.Unfortunately, I was too aggressive in changing the gain of our amplifiers and the scales of our recording channels.
Consequently, I could not statistically survey the occurrence of waves associated with the aurora.Parks and I published a paper on magnetic pulsations and their relation to the substorm (Parks et al., 1966).On our return to Berkeley, we discovered that Akasofu had published another paper on the relation of magnetic activity to the aurora (Akasofu et al., 1965).This paper established a close relationship between the aurora and magnetic variations.
In 1966 I to returned to the aurora zone to obtain adequate data for my dissertation.Anderson had turned his attention to satellite measurements in the tail, and Parks had taken a Post Doc position in Minnesota.I ended up the de-facto head of the expedition.On arrival in Flin Flon, I set the amplifiers and recording channels to fixed values and never changed them.We used the concept of a substorm to determine when to fly balloons.We obtained good data on the association between aurora, electron precipitation, magnetic pulsations, and large-scale magnetic variations.Unfortunately, all the data were in the form of analog charts.It took nearly 2 years to digitize the records for computer analysis.
During the next 2 years, there was a breakthrough in the digital analysis of signals.Digital filters became common, and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) appeared.These made it possible to analyze the signals I had digitized.To find how the signals changed with time, I developed one of the first algorithms for digital dynamic spectral analysis (McPherron, 1968).I used the FFT to examine the correlations between particles and fields.At this time, I began working with another Berkeley graduate student, Ferd Coroniti.He helped Parks and me to interpret our results theoretically.We wrote three papers culminating in the third, introducing a new concept and term, the magnetospheric substorm (Coroniti et al., 1968).The basic concept is that the entire magnetosphere undergoes a systematic sequence of processes, and the auroral and magnetic substorms are simply two manifestations of this sequence.
In January 1968, I was writing my dissertation when I received a phone call from Parks in Minnesota.He was working on particle data obtained by sensors on the first geosynchronous spacecraft, ATS-1.He said he was going to UCLA to discuss the relationship between particles and fields in space with Professors Paul Coleman and David Cummings.UCLA had built the magnetometer for the spacecraft.He suggested that I meet him in Los Angeles and participate in the meeting.He also suggested that he would ask me to describe my ideas concerning the magnetospheric substorm during the meeting.By this time, I had found that Pi2 pulsations were occurring before the onset of the auroral expansion phase, and I began calling this interval the growth phase of the substorm.My explanation of the ATS-1 magnetic field observations was persuasive because Coleman asked me if I was interested in a Post Doc position at UCLA.I immediately said yes, and I came to UCLA in June 1968.In early 1969 Professor Cummings decided to take a position as the chair of a small physics department.I was offered his position as an assistant professor when he left.I said yes, and without any formalities required today, I finally reached my goal of being a professor at a major research university.

My Early Years as a Professor at UCLA
It is important to emphasize that UCLA, like Berkeley, had also been identified by NASA as a center of excellence and was given funds to build a Space Science laboratory, which was later named Slichter Hall.Like other centers, funding for Space Physics came from a large NASA grant.At UCLA, this building became the headquarters of a unique institution called the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP).The president of the University of California System directly funded this institute, and it provided half of the academic appointments of all its faculty, with the only obligation being successful research.This support allowed the faculty to propose large projects, do more research, and make time available to travel worldwide, promoting the research.Professor When I arrived at UCLA, I began work on the occurrence of magnetic pulsations in space and their relation to substorms.However, I also prepared a manuscript on the substorm growth phase and submitted it for publication in early 1970.Shortly after submission, I received a call from the editor, Prof. Alex Dessler.He told me that both referees had rejected the paper and that one of them would never agree to its acceptance.He suggested I reduce the paper to a brief report requiring only one referee and call Prof. Gordon Rostoker to negotiate an acceptable revision.I did this, and Rostoker told me he would never accept the demonstration based on pulsations.If I could show him the growth phase in magnetograms, he would agree to publication, and I did this, and the paper was accepted and published.Its publication initiated a 15-year interval of constant attacks on the concept.Eventually, so many others found evidence of its existence that it became an integral part of the concept of a magnetospheric substorm.
The idea that magnetic reconnection drives activity (Dungey, 1961) began spreading in the space science community (Axford, 1969).Our initial idea of how this occurred appeared in two papers with a visiting scholar (Aubry & McPherron, 1971;Aubry et al., 1972).The first paper established that a southward turning increased tail field and plasma sheet thinning.The second paper demonstrated that dayside reconnection eroded the magnetopause allowing the solar wind to transport magnetic flux to the tail lobe.I and Chris Russell elaborated this work in several papers (McPherron, Russell, & Aubry, 1973;McPherron, Russell, Kivelson, & Coleman, 1973;Russell & McPherron, 1973;Russell et al., 1971).A major element of this work was introducing the concept of the substorm current wedge.We argued that a major effect of reconnection in the tail was the development of the substorm current wedge.The wedge is a current system in which the tail current flows along field lines closing in the midnight sector of the auroral zone ionosphere.We illustrate the essence of this idea in Figure 3.The name comes from the wedge-shaped equivalent current shown in the lower right.
The last figure in the preprint of the paper on the phenomenological substorm model (McPherron, Russell, & Aubry, 1973) was not included in the published paper.This figure was finally published 47 years later (McPherron, 2020).Its removal was because I thought its publication might end my career.In 1972 I presented the contents of this paper at a conference in San Diego.The chair of the session was Akasofu.In the front row, the only space physicist to obtain a Nobel Prize, Hannes Alfven, was sitting.At the end of my talk, Akasofu asked me why I had not shown the last figure.I said that I did not fully understand the behavior of the plasma, but I thought the magnetic field was correct.He suggested I show and discuss figure.I put it on the view graph machine.It was a near-Earth neutral line at about 15 Re down the tail.Alfven stood up, walked to the aisle, marched up the stairs to the conference room doors, slammed them open, and left the session.At the time, I thought tenure was a lost cause.Controversy can be helpful when you are close to the truth and other researchers support you.I received tenure in 1976, and my employment was secure.I have worked on the development of these early ideas ever since.

Characteristics and Circumstances for Becoming a Successful Researcher
What can we learn from this brief history?In my case, I became interested in science when I was in the second or third grade.Because of my family's poor circumstances, I was strongly motivated to be self-sufficient.I exhibited initiative in finding tools and materials to help in my childhood activities.I had abilities such as facility with language, spatial perception, and artistic skills.I had a good education, later discovering that my high school teachers were some of the best in Washington State.I was very active in self-study with an emphasis on science.Along the way, there were many helping hands.These include my wife, whom I married at the end of my third year as an undergraduate, my librarian grandmother, my Boeing supervisor, my graduate colleagues at Berkeley, Paul Coleman at UCLA, and my close colleagues Kivelson, Walker, Khuranam, and Russell.Later in my career, my friend and colleague, Daniel Baker, helped me by pressing me to do more.Also, it is important to have fortunate circumstances.I was a child during World War II.I was too young for the Korean War; I was a valuable individual studying science during the cold war, and so was kept out of the Viet Nam War.
Scientists were in great demand at this time.Recognizing opportunities such as the auroral zone trips as a graduate student or my meeting with Coleman at UCLA is also important.It is essential to have a good work environment.The IGPP and a large group of space physicists provided this.All achievements require hard work.

10.1029/2022CN000190
7 of 9 At the beginning of high school, I worked until 2 a.m.almost every night.This work ethic continued for more than 20 years.Success depends on good communication skills.Well-prepared talks with well-designed graphics presented in a lively manner are essential.Clear writing of proposals and papers is needed as well.Creating simple diagrams that capture the essence of an idea and a phrase that encapsulates it helps a lot.Finally, there is persistence.It is necessary to develop new evidence to support controversial ideas continuously.Although the growth phase was eventually accepted, the idea that magnetic reconnection causes substorm expansion is still questioned.

Implications
What does this mean for someone seeking a research career at a major university?If you can obtain a Ph.D. in space physics, you can probably find a University postdoc position doing work similar to your dissertation.However, after a few years, this position ends, and you must fund yourself with government grants.Remember that today the probability of success with NASA and NSF proposals is between 1/3 and 1/10.At first, the proposals may take more than 1 month to write.You cannot pay yourself out of a previous grant while writing the proposal.My University does not provide any help in this process.If you obtain a grant, over half is taken as overhead.Little of this returned as services.You must use the remainder of the grant to pay for all support such as telephone, internet, computers, travel, meetings, publications, salary, benefits, undergraduate helpers, programmers, and postdocs.If you fail to obtain funding, my University does not provide bridging funds.If you are successful for many years and publish frequently, you are promoted to a higher salary and must subsidize the benefits of younger researchers.It takes more than $400,000 a year to support one senior researcher.It is extremely unlikely that many researchers can continuously maintain this level of funding working in isolation.
Many researchers try to obtain a faculty appointment, and today there are many applicants for every position.If you are successful, you can expect ¾ of your salary from the University.During the summer quarter, you must pay yourself.For this support, you must teach and supervise students.Graduate students in the sciences are expensive; at UCLA, they cost about $120,000 annually.Remember that typical grants last 3 years, while a graduate student takes 4-7 years.You need more than one grant for the duration of the student's education.
The situation may differ at other universities, with partial support from the institution and the rest from grants.If, instead, you work at a large institution like a NASA laboratory, or a corporation supporting government activities, there are often fallback positions that allow you to work as part of a team on a very large project.If you successfully write grant proposals, you may have the opportunity to work independently.I feel very fortunate to have become established at the right place and time.Space physics had just come into its own with spacecraft development and measurements above the Earth.Computers were growing rapidly in power, as were mathematical data analysis and display methods.I was part of a collaborative group that shared resources and made it possible to carry out our work.I was also part of a much larger network of individuals in different departments who contributed ideas and directions for our research.Our department and the IGPP were on the leading edge of research at this time, enabling us to attract excellent students from around the world.Our experience led us to write a textbook that became the fundamental source of space physics used in much of the world (Kivelson & Russell, 1995).Our students and post-doctoral researchers have become leaders at many other institutions.
My research activity has been magnetospheric physics of solar wind interactions with the Earth's magnetic field.I suspect that much of the initial discovery in this area is nearing its end, so the probability of a breakthrough accomplished by simply scanning data is small.There are many unresolved details, but these probably require massive amounts of data and advanced computer analysis.The trend in this research area is the practical application of our current understanding to forecasting space weather.This trend means the creation of instruments to acquire data from multiple sources.It means computer modeling of the magnetosphere and its link to the ionosphere.I advise developing instrumentation or strong computer programming skills if you are interested in this research activity.If you choose the latter, you need experience with numerical simulation, the ability to utilize machine learning and association with large research groups with stable funding.Various sources have supported my career in space physics for nearly 50 years.These include the University of California, the IGPP, the National Science Foundation, The National Aerospace and Space Administration, the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory.I have been retired for 13 years but have been fortunate to have sufficient support to continue my work.The Department of Earth Planetary and Space Sciences (EPSS) has supported me during this period allowing me to retain my office of 40 years.The Covid pandemic changed this pattern, forcing us to work from home.Fortunately, the internet has advanced to the point that this is possible.No date were used in the creation of this paper.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.My home near Manson, WA for the first 7 years of my life.Mother took the picture of my sister, brother, and me with her Kodak box camera.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The elementary school in Ardenvoir, WA about 73 years after the author finished the fifth grade.The school had two teachers and two class rooms for five grades.
distinguished people to UCLA as professors in this environment.These included George Siscoe and Richard Thorne in Atmospheric Sciences, Charlie Kennel, Ferd Coroniti, and Maha Abdalla in Physics, and myself, Margaret Kivelson, and Chris Russell in what is now called the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Spaces Sciences (EPSS).At its peak, over 27 PhDs were doing space research at UCLA.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The concept of the substorm current wedge is illustrated schematically.Top panel shows tail current diversion during expansion phase.Bottom right shows an equivalent current, and bottom left the ground magnetic perturbations of the current system.