Mourning for Reimar Lüst

Reimar Lüst, brilliant astrophysicist, scientific statesman, former president of the Max Planck Society, and long-term visitor to our institute, died on 31 March 2020, at the age of 97.

Reimar Lüst as president of the Max Planck Society played a decisive role when the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) was founded in 1974. He thus recognized the importance of climate research long before anthropogenic climate change became a pressing societal issue.  Reimar Lüst retired with his wife in Hamburg where he maintained his office within the MPI-M. Even well into his 97th year, he maintained an active presence at the institute, generously sharing his time as both advisor and advocate. We did not approach him often, but when we did, the matter was crucial, and his advice was unfailingly effective.

Reimar Lüst was born on 25 March, 1923 and can reflect back at a singular career in science. He studied physics and received his PhD in 1951 under Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen. After several research periods and teaching assignments at different renowned universities in the USA and three years as a scientific member at the then Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, Reimar Lüst became the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich in 1963, which he led until 1972. In Garching he laid the foundation for German space research and exploration. Using French rockets, barium containers were carried to high altitudes to create artificial comet tails. This work demonstrated that ionized particles in natural comet tails were oriented by the solar wind. During this time he was also instrumental in setting up the European space agency ESRO. He was ESRO’s Director of Science (1962 - 1964) and Vice President (1968 - 1970). From 1965 to 1972, Reimar Lüst also was a member of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), becoming its head in 1969.