Kristian Birkeland

Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland was born on December 13, 1867, in Christiania. Appointed Professor of Physics at the Royal Frederick University at age thirty-one, he conducted pioneering Arctic expeditions to northern Norway to measure magnetic field variations.

Using his famous Terrella experiment—a magnetized sphere inside an evacuated glass chamber bombarded with electrons—Birkeland successfully simulated the aurora borealis, proving that geomagnetic storms are driven by charged particles emitted from the sun flowing into polar atmospheres along magnetic field lines. To finance his costly research, he partnered with Samuel Eyde to invent the Birkeland–Eyde electric arc process for industrial nitrogen fixation, giving birth to Norsk Hydro.