Former Goddard Employee Frank McDonald Receives O'Ceallaigh Award in Tsukuba Japan

Frank McDonald received the O'Ceallaigh Award presented at the 28th International Conference on Cosmic Rays (ICRC), which was held in Tsukuba, Japan this August. The award was established through the estate of Dr. Cormac O'Ceallaigh, an Irish scientist, to honor life-time achievement in the field of cosmic ray physics. (O'Ceallaigh is pronounced O'Kelly)

	(left) Drs. Kenneth McCracken, Australia, Frank McDonald, former Goddard employee, Edward Stone, CALTech and Peter Wenzel, chairman of the ICRC

Dr. McDonald was honored for his long and illustrious career as a space pioneer. He joined NASA at Goddard's Space Flight Center in 1959, as a young physicist pioneering in cosmic rays. During his career at NASA, he served as Principal Investigator on 15 NASA space missions, and is still actively interpreting data from the Voyager Deep Space Missions and IMP 8.

At the ceremony, he was cited for his three major contributions to the cosmic ray field, first for his own research, then for his administrative ability; he served as chief of the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at Goddard and as chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC from 1982 through 1987, and finally and equally important, for his support for younger scientists as a mentor and a guide.

Since his retirement from Goddard in 1989, Dr. McDonald, a member of the National Academy of Sciences continues his research activities as a senior research scientist at the Institute of Physical Sciences and Technology at the University of Maryland.