IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 29, NO. 2. APRIL 2001 139

Tribute to Professor D. Asoka Mendis on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday

n February 13, 2001, Prof. D. Asoka Mendis celebrated his 65th birthday after almost 35 years of active research in astro- 0 physics, including the field of dusty plasmas. The Guest Editors proposed to honor Asoka on this occasion by dedicating the current Special Issue on Dusty Plasmas of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE to him. Editor Steve Gitoiner gener- ously supported this idea. The whole-hearted support of the entire dusty plasma community reflects our deep respect for Asoka, a founder and leading researcher in the field of dusty plasmas.

After undergraduate education in Sri Lanka, Asoka entered Victoria University of Manchester, U.K., to pursue graduate studies in astrophysics in 1964. Under the guidance of Prof. Franz Kahn, he received the Ph.D. degree in the summer of 1967. In May 1969, he moved to the University of California San Diego at La J o b , where he built up his carrier as a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. I

From the early 1980s, through his fundamental discoveries, dedication, and unselfish collaboration with many active researchers in this field, Asoka ushered dusty plasma research into main-stream science. In 1986, together with H. AlfvCn and E. C. Whipple, Asoka organized the very first Dusty Plasma Meeting, which blossomed into a series of U.S. Workshops and numerous other international workshops and conferences.

Dusty plasma research has become a truly interdisciplinary field during the last 20 years, applicable to diverse phenomena in nature, in the laboratory, and in industry, that vary by many orders of magnitude on both temporal and spatial scales. For example, the charging of micron-sized particles is now recognized to be intimately related to the physics of vast regions of interstellar space. The presence of heavy charge carriers with time-dependent charge-to-mass ratios (“dust”) renders the ordinary plasma (electrons and ions) behavior much more complex. Unusual dust dynamics, the possibility of novel wave modes, and instabilities appear. The field, in general, witnessed an explosion in recent years, marked for example by an exponentially growing number of publications.

It is my recollection that, in addition to Asoka’s pioneering works on all aspects of dusty plasma research (charging, dynamics, waves, and strongly coupled systems) and their applications (comets, planetary rings, and interstellar medium), he also coined some of our basic terminology. This includes “gravito-electrodynamics” (to describe single particle motion in planetary magnetospheres) and “dusty plasma versus dust in a plasma” (to delineate regions where dust collective effects are important from those where a test particle approach is appropriate).

I, with many of my colleagues, learned a great deal of physics from Asoka, but perhaps just as important, we also leamed how inuch fun science can be. Asoka remains a role model for many of us, setting an example of how to address and solve difficult scientific questions, and simultaneously promote and guide our younger colleagues. On behalf of the entire dusty plasma physics community, I wish Asoka a very long, happy, healthy, and prosperous life, with continued success.

MIHALY HORANYI Atmospheric and Space Physics Lab University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0392 USA

Puhlisher Item ldentifier S 0093-3813(01~103689-X.

‘D. A. Mendis, “Of comets, rings and other things: a random walk in cosmic physics,” Plunetuy mid Space Sci. 48, pp. 25 1-270, 2000.

0093-3813/01$10.00 Q 2001 IEEE

1.50 IEEE TRANSACTTONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 29, NO. 2, APRIL 2001

Mih6ly Horhyi was born in 1955 in Budapest, Hungary. He received the M.S. degree in 1980 and the Ph.D. degree in 1982 in physics from Lorind Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary.

He held research positions at the Central Research Institute for Physics, Budapest, from 1982 to 1984. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1985, at Florida State University, Tallahassee, from 1985 to 1985, and at the University of Arizona at Tempe from 1589 to 1952. He joined the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in 1992 and the Physics Department in 1999, University of Col- orado, Boulder. His research interests include space hardware development and theoretical and experimental investigations of space and laboratory dusty plasmas, electrodynamic processes and their role in the origin, and evolution of the solar system, comets, and planetary rings.