Hess, Victor Francis 1883-1964
US physicist and Nobel Prize winner

He was born in Waldstein, Austria, and while on the staff of Vienna University during 1911-12, he made a number of manned balloon flights carrying ionization chambers. He demonstrated that the radiation intensity in the atmosphere increased with height, and concluded that the high-energy cosmic radiation that was responsible must originate from outer space. He also helped to determine the number of alpha particles given off by a gram of radium (1918). For his work on 'cosmic radiation' he was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize for physics, jointly with Carl Anderson. In 1938 he emigrated to the USA to become Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York (1938-56).