WalterGonzalez received his PhD in Physics from theUniversity of California-Berkeley in 1973 and has worked at Stanford university,Caltech- JPL/NASA, Michigan university and atseveral other universities abroad, alternating with his research position in Brazil.He is head of the Heliospheric and Magnetospheric Division of the NationalInstitute for Space Research of Brazil, INPE . Together with Prof F S Mozerfrom UC Berkeley Prof Gonzalez published in 1974 the first quantitative modelfor Magnetic Reconnection at the Earth’s magnetopause, thus introducing theconcepts of "component reconnection", "tilted reconnectionline", "reconnection potential" and "power transfer fromthe solar wind to the Earth’s magnetosphere due to reconnection". He alsopublished in 1994 the paper "What is a Geomagnetic Storm?", which hasbeen extensively cited. He is author of more than 200 articles, 15 book chaptersand 4 books in space plasma physics. He is the first president-elect of theLatin-American Space Geophysics association, a Distinguished Visiting scientistof NASA and is Member of the Brazilian and Peruvian Academy of Sciences. EugeneParker received hisB.S. degree in physics from Michigan State University in 1948 and Ph.D. fromCaltech in 1951. Inthe mid-1950s he developed the theory on the supersonic solar wind andpredicted the Parker-spiral shape of the solar/interplanetary magnetic field inthe outer solar system. Professor Parker was elected to the National Academy ofSciences in 1967. He has been at the Universityof Chicago since 1955,where he has held positions in the physics department, the astronomy andastrophysics department and the Enrico Fermi Institute. He is a leadingauthority on the solar wind, solar dynamo, space plasmas and cosmic magneticfields. He is author of many articles and several books on cosmic and spaceplasmas and is still engaged in active research at the University of Chicago.
