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Dr. Thomas Lytton Cline Senior Scientist Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics Goddard Senior Fellow  Dr.
Cline began with a balloon-borne study as his PhD thesis at MIT (that
became the first published experiment in gamma-ray astronomy). He then
joined NASA to spent his first decade at Goddard enjoying the
opportunities to work with Frank McDonald on some early space-borne
experiments in interplanetary and solar-flare particles, and to fly
several of his own experiments. The many advances and mini-discoveries
in the 1960s and early 70s that resulted from Goddard's, the Lab's, and
even Cline's, own efforts were the basis of a very exciting and
satisfying period in history. Then, Cline's solar flare x-ray
experiment in 1973 was the first to verify the discovery of cosmic
gamma-ray bursts, holding him hostage to that subdiscipline ever since.
His interplanetary network promotion deepened the burst mystery by
showing them not to be related to known x-ray phenomena. The
localization of one anomalous 1979 transient source within the N49
supernova remnant waited 13 years for the confirmation of his claims
that a distinct category of transients had been found and that such
events, unlike gamma ray bursts, originated in distant SNR sources.
Later, Cline helped envision the burst experiment on Compton GRO that
promoted a wider range of interest in bursts with its demonstration
that their source pattern is at least consistent with a cosmological
origin. He helped enable the creation of the GCN, an automatic
gamma-ray transient alert system (cited by Nature magazine as the first
use of the Internet as an active research tool) and helped promote the
creation of robotic telescopes to investigate burst afterglows. After
decades of space probe cancellations and failures, a new interplanetary
network Cline helped create is now localizing gamma-ray burst sources
with adequate precision and speed to permit their detailed
astrophysical study. He has continued active work in the cosmic
gamma-ray transient discipline and appreciates his good fortune to be
so often involved in the evolution of this new study of Nature. |