Victor Franz Hess

Victor Franz Hess was born on June 24, 1883, at Waldstein Castle in Styria. Earning his doctorate at the University of Graz, Hess undertook risky high-altitude open-basket balloon flights in 1911 and 1912 with electroscope instruments, measuring atmospheric ionization up to altitudes of 5.3 kilometers, even during a near-total solar eclipse.

Hess decisively proved that radiation increased dramatically with altitude, proving its origin lay not from the Earth but from outer space—a phenomenon later named 'cosmic rays'. In 1936, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Carl David Anderson. Dismissed by the Nazis in 1938 for having a Jewish wife, he emigrated to the United States, teaching at Fordham University.