Ernest (Ernie) C. Ray

Ernest C. Ray, or Ernie, as all his associates knew him, was born on 23 February 1930 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and he grew up in that city as a bright youth in a stimulating household. In high school, he was in the marching band as a clarinetist, in theater, and unusually active in the Boy Scouts, where he attained the rank of Eagle Scout.

Following high school, Ernie began his college work at Saint Joseph Junior College. Since he had settled upon physics as his primary academic interest, and as Saint Joseph did not offer a physics curriculum, he moved to the University of Iowa after his second year at St. Joseph. He received his B. A. degree in the fall of 1949. He continued there for all of his graduate work, receiving his M. S. and Ph. D. degrees in 1953 and 1956, respectively.

During his graduate study years, Ernie served several stints at Princeton University, New Jersey, working on the Matterhorn nuclear fusion project. Throughout his years at Iowa, he made major contributions to the research program through his study of, and keen insight into, physics and, particularly, the motions of charged particles in the near-Earth region.

Following receipt of his Ph. D. degree, Van Allen offered him a series of faculty positions, first as an instructor, then as an assistant professor. He remained there until June 1961, when

CHAPTER 12 • DISCOVERY OF THE TRAPPED RADIATION

he took a short appointment at the RAND Corporation at Santa Monica, California. In early 1962, he joined the research staff at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Moving for a year and a half to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, he returned to Goddard in early 1965.

By that time, his friends noted a marked personality change. His creative contributions to Goddard’s research waned, he stopped publishing, and it became increasingly difficult to converse with him. His descent into the depths of acute schizophrenia continued to the point that he was committed to a mental health institution in 1970. He remained there, in halfway houses, and in other transitional facilities for the rest of his life. In his later years, he became a valued volunteer at the Baltimore Fellowship of Lights, an organization that provides assistance for runaway youths and their families. In that environment, he managed to maintain his dignity and live a useful life until he died, in December 1989, of kidney cancer and chronic lung disease.