Hanna von Hoerner

Hanna von Hoerner (14 November 1942 – 4 July 2014) was a German astrophysicist. She founded the company von Hoerner & Sulger, which produces scientific instruments, notably dust analyzers used on space missions by ESA and NASA.

Biography

Hanna von Hoerner was born in Görlitz in 1942. Her father was the astrophysicist Sebastian von Hoerner. With his encouragement, she built an electrical circuit at the age of three years, repaired radios at the age of six years, and built an oscilloscope at the age of fourteen years. In the early 1960s, after finishing her Abitur, she moved with her family to the United States and worked as a research assistant at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, where her father was also working.

In 1965, von Hoerner returned to Germany to study experimental physics at Heidelberg University. She received her undergraduate degree in 1971 and her PhD in 1974. In 1971, she founded the company von Hoerner & Sulger, which is based in Schwetzingen and produces scientific instruments for use in space and medicine. She became famous in the space industry in 1979–1980 when her company was commissioned by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research to design a cosmic dust detector for use in the Vega program missions to Venus. The company would later receive commissions from ESA and NASA.

Von Hoerner's largest project was the design of COSIMA (Cometary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser), an instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft that analyses the composition of dust particles using secondary ion mass spectrometry. Von Hoerner & Sulger had previously designed CIDA (Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer), a dust analysis instrument on board the NASA spacecraft Stardust, which launched in 1999.

Von Hoerner was awarded the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg in 2009 and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany First Class in 2013 for her contributions to space science in Germany. She died in Oftersheim on 4 July 2014, aged 71.