Ground-Based Solar Research: An Assessment and Strategy for the Future (1998)

At the end of 1997, the Solar Physics Division (SPD) had 379 full members, 51 student members, and 74 affiliate members. (Affiliate members belong to the SPD, but not the American Astronomical Society (AAS); total AAS membership in 1998 was approximately 6,500.) Some full and affiliate SPD members are not U.S. citizens or residents; it is estimated that there are approximately 30 foreign members.

Using members' addresses, the SPD provided a rough breakdown of members' work locations. The categories are shown below; note that “Home/Unknown” likely reflects retirees or students, but in some cases might be people who belong in one of the other categories. Also note that some members of the solar community who are not SPD members, especially students, are likely underrepresented; therefore, these totals should be taken as lower limits.

College or University 220

Government Laboratory 181

Private Institution 40

Home/Unknown 71

Total 512

The breakdown into Student and Nonstudent is:

Nonstudents: 442

Students: 70

A breakdown from the SPD list by university is shown below. The total number of students listed is less than the total above because some of the students entered their home address, or an affiliation with a laboratory, and so were not included in this university-only list. The number reported above (70) is thought to be more accurate. The SPD list is known to undercount students. For example, at a time when the New Jersey Institute of Technology had eight graduate students associated with the Big Bear Solar Observatory and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, only one was listed as a member.

Another indication of where most solar research within academia is occurring is given by counting papers presented at the 1998 AGU/SPD meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. Although the counts are not very accurate, SPD head Steven Kahler, who performed the work, believes that they should include all universities with sizable solar research groups. Kahler did not count papers he considered interplanetary research, which therefore discriminated against institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology. Further, students represented only a small fraction of the authors on the abstracts counted.

Complicating the counting in the list above is that institutes attached to or associated with universities may or may not have much to do with students and their education. At the University of Colorado, for example, students might be working at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or the nearby High Altitude Observatory. Other examples include Stanford University, which may have students working at Lockheed Martin's institute or the Johns Hopkins University, which operates the Applied Physics Laboratory.