Translation and Dissemination Via a Digital Archive/E-Book of the Writings of Heinz Kasemir on Atmospheric Electricity

这笔赠款支持翻译和电子传播(通过美国地球物理联盟主办的出版物网站)一组58篇科学论文和技术报告，这些报告包含1000多页文字和插图，作者是德国著名物理学家海因茨·卡西米尔博士，他后来移民到美国，在美国国家海洋和大气管理局工作，长期从事闪电物理的基础研究。卡西米尔博士在他的著作中提出了一项重要发现，在1950年左右，他提出了照明作为一种零净电荷的双向引导者的概念--这个概念直到几十年后才在更广泛的社区中得到充分理解。卡西米尔对闪电通道的详细和开创性的分析，建立了电场和向上引导的电荷发展之间的关键关系，被视为在正确理解闪电过程方面迄今缺少的一个环节。他的这项工作和其他方面的工作将在对精选论文的介绍和评论中得到强调，这将有助于将这项工作置于现代照明研究的背景下。这项活动的智力价值来自于努力更全面地描述闪电通道的发展和传播的物理学。这一努力的更广泛影响将通过保存和极大地改善获得大气电力研究领域的大量科学工作来实现。

This grant provides support for translation and electronic dissemination (via an American Geophysical Union-hosted publications website) of a group of 58 scientific papers and technical reports comprising over 1000 pages of text & illustrations authored by Dr. Heinz Kasemir, a noted German physicist who later emigrated to the U.S. where he worked within NOAA and was long engaged in fundamental studies of lightning physics. Among key findings represented in his body of work, which has until now not been readily accessible, around 1950 Dr. Kasemir advanced the notion that lighting develops as a bi-directional leader with zero net charge--a concept that was not fully appreciated in the broader community until many decades later. Kasemir's detailed and ground-breaking analysis of lightning channels, which established key relationships between electric fields and charge development in upward-directed leaders, are viewed as representing a heretofore missing link in proper understanding of the lightning process. This and other aspects of his work will be highlighted in an introduction and commentary on selected papers, which will serve to place this work in the context of modern lighting research.The Intellectual Merit of this activity derives from efforts to more comprehensively describe the physics of lightning channel development and propagation. Broader Impacts of this effort will come through the preservation and greatly improved access to a large body of scientific work in the area of atmospheric electricity research.