Michelle Thomsen

Michelle F. Thomsen is space physicist known for her research on the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn.

[3] Her doctoral advisor, James Van Allen, recruited her right from her entrance exam to work on the data from Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 on the radiation belts of Jupiter and Saturn.

[4][5] From 1977 until 1980 she remained at the University of Iowa as a postdoctoral scientist, and then left for the Max-Planck-Institut fur Aeronomie in Lindau, West Germany.

[5] Thomsen's early research was on the magnetospheres of Jupiter[6][7][8][9] and Saturn.

[10][11] Her research on Earth's bow shock used the ISEE-1 and ISEE-2 satellites to track the behavior of high energy particles from the magnetosphere.

The figure shows the systems making up Pioneer 10 which Thomsen used in her graduate research to study the radiation belts of Jupiter.