A Heliophysics Star Honored: Karel Schrijver
Dr. Karel Schrijver, one of the founders of the NASA Heliophysics Summer School and author and editor of five foundational textbooks and an e-book on heliophysics. Photo from Amazon.com author profile.
In mid-September of this year, we lost a bright star in the world of heliophysics. Dr. Carolus J. (Karel) Schrijver, who was foundational to the creation of the NASA Heliophysics Summer School passed away. Schrijver was one of the great minds who realized the need for work to be done to integrate the numerous focused fields of astrophysics into the cross-disciplinary field of heliophysics.
During his career at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technical Center’s Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Karel Schrijver was approached in a way that changed the trajectory of heliophysics education. Seeing a need to more quickly advance space weather, and an opportunity for students to get a broader view if the varied areas of research were integrated, Madhulika “Lika” Guhathakurta, Karel Schrijver, Jack Eddy, Tom Bogdan, Dick Fisher, and Tim Killeen and all set out to create the NASA Heliophysics Summer School. Karel served as an inaugural dean, along with George Siscoe, in 2007 for the NASA Heliophysics Summer School (HSS).
Schrijver was a solar physicist, and Siscoe a space physicist, who represented the “yin and yang of heliophysics.” Listen to Karel explain the need to unite these sciences when sharing the history of the HSS. He continued as a dean for the first three years.
This summer school would generate a body of integrated knowledge, a community, and aids that faculty could use to build curricula for their own heliophysics courses. After the summer school’s learning and socializing were over, Schrijver and Siscoe began to compile the first heliophysics textbook. It was a labor of translation that they would repeat in 2008 and 2009. Karel shared “We created three textbooks by basically asking each teacher to give us a lecture, and a text. And then George and I sat down with these lecturers and went through, line by line, asking for explanations that other experts in other fields and students also might be able to understand. So there was a lot of editing in that.” Eventually five textbooks, moving from basic science to more applied knowledge, were produced.
Jan Sojka, a physicist and co-editor with Schrijver and Fran Bagenal of textbooks four and five shared “There were no equivalent books that take these particular core disciplines [of electromagnetism and plasma physics] and apply them in space physics … there’s a common theme.” In 2019, Schrijver condensed these textbooks into a single freely available online volume, Principles of Heliophysics, which emphasizes the influence of universal processes on habitability.
Schrijver helped set a general theme for the summer school taking a systems approach with an emphasis on looking for ways to draw broad connections between the different sub-disciplines by pointing out the similarities in the physical processes being studied in the different domains. His teaching efforts also included approximately 200 activities for readers to build on their understanding of the material being presented in the text. After the inaugural three years as dean, Karel served again in the position along with Fran Bagenal and Jan Sojka from 2012 – 2015. Additionally, Karel participated in the planning for the 2024 Summer School, particularly around the capstone project where participants explored the habitability of various astronomical objects – exoplanets, moons, and rouge planets.
Among the many wonderful legacies that Karel Schrijver has left the world are his efforts which will continue to unite numerous disparate fields under the umbrella of heliophysics. His work to create and mold the NASA’s Heliophysics Summer School, the writing and editing of five text book volumes, the overarching free e-volume Principles of Heliophysics, the numerous educational activities for students to build their understanding of heliophysics, and the time and energy he spent sharing his love for this science and his thoughtful reflections with students will continue to grow and flourish. Karel Schrijver’s hard work and dedication will always be remembered with great affection and gratitude.
Learn more about the history of the NASA Heliophysics Summer School, explore Karel’s e-book, see the five textbooks, and learn more about his work as dean. Read Karel Schrijver’s obituary to learn more about his life and impressive contributions to science on Solar News.
