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Tan Kah Kee Science Award in Earth Sciences 2006
 

Tu Chuanyi, space physicist, was born on 24 July 1940 in Beijing. He graduated from Department of Geophysics, Peking University. He made scientific collaborations at Catholic University of America from 1980 to 1981 and at Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie of Germany from 1988 to 1990. He was elected Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. He is now a full professor in the school of Earth and Space Science.

Tu Chuanyi made major contributions to the study of the solar wind formation including the energy and the mass supply, heating and acceleration of the solar wind. In a series of collaboration work, he also made major contribution to develop an extended intermittence theory to explain the nature of high order structure function in the solar wind. Till May 2006, Tu Chuanyi’s papers have been quoted 1766 times by SCI collecting papers. The paper with him as the first author have been quoted 1206 times by SCI papers, among which the most frequently quoted one have been quoted 210 times.

The Formation of the Solar Wind

Abstract

The solar wind has been an essential topic in space physics ever since 1951 when it was inferred from cometary observations and predicted from coronal models. Tu made great contributions on the study of the solar wind turbulence and the heating of the solar wind. Tu (1988, J.Geophys Res.,93, 7-20) described for the first time the energy transfer of the Alfvenic fluctuations in the solar wind in both real space and in frequency range by developing a WKB-like turbulence theory which combines the linear wave refraction effect and non-linear turbulence effect. With this theory, both the observations of the evolution of magnetic spectrum and the solar wind heating are explained successfully as caused by a turbulence energy cascade processes. Tu also made great contributions on the study of the origin of the solar wind. Tu et al.(2005, Science, 308, 519-523) identified for the first time the origin of the solar wind flow in the solar atmosphere by analyzing ultraviolet lines emitted from the solar chromospheres and the solar magnetic field data. It was established that the solar wind starts flowing out of the corona at heights above the photosphere between 5 mega-meters and 20 mega-meters in magnetic funnels. Based on these results, it suggested a new idea that the initial mass supply for the solar wind flow in the funnels is from the side loops with medium scale. So the solar wind is suggested to originate in a 3-D structure rather than in the well belied 1-D fluid tube. The two papers and related Tu’s works opened a new way to study the solar wind formation, the origin, the heating and acceleration.

 
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