Seiff, Alvin

Biograhpical Note

Alvin Seiff (called "Al" by his colleagues) made important contributions to the space exploration community during his career at NASA's Ames Research Center. He is thought by many to be the chief creator of the idea of employing entry probes to determine a planet's atmospheric structure.

Seiff was born in Kansas City, Missouri. When he was twenty years old, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Missouri in chemical engineering. Soon after, Seiff joined the Manhattan Project and worked on resolving the uranium separation problem. Before joining the Ames Research Center in 1948, Seiff lectured at the University of Tennessee teaching physics.

In his career at Ames Research Center, Seiff undertook many roles and tasks, impressing his colleagues with his knowledge, skills, and leadership ability in each position he held. For his first ten years (1948-1957) at NASA (at that time it was called NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), Seiff was as a research scientist. From 1952 until 1963 Seiff also became the Chief of the Supersonic Free Flight Research Branch at Ames. Subsequently, he became the Chief of the Vehicle Environment Division from 1963 until 1972. During that period, Ames became one of the chief centers for reentry studies. For instance, it was Seiff's team that planned out and conducted the Planetary Atmosphere Experiments Test (PAET) in 1971 that proved reliable data (such as chemical composition and changes in density, temperature, and pressure) could be retrieved from probes entering a planetary atmosphere. The experience and knowledge NASA gained from the PAET Project was used to create the foundation upon which all subsequent entry and descent experiments were based, including the Pioneer Venus Mission, the Viking Mission to Mars, the Galileo Mission to Jupiter, the Cassini-Huygens Atmospheric Entry Probe into Titan, and the Mars Pathfinder. For a majority of these missions (the Pioneer Probe Mission to Venus, the Viking Mission to Mars, the Galileo Probe Mission to Jupiter, and the Mars Pathfinder) Seiff was the Principal Investigator for the Atmospheric Structure Instruments. For the Cassini-Huygens Probe, Seiff, in conjunction with several European Space Agency colleagues, was a Co-Investigator for the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument.

In 1972, Seiff became a Senior Staff Scientist in the Space Science Division until he retired 1986. However, even after retirement, Seiff remained active in space exploration studies at NASA Ames as a research associate. During the Mars Pathfinder Mission development, he was the Chairman of the Atmospheric Science Advisory Team. Once Pathfinder was launched, Seiff joined the team of scientists in charge of the Atmospheric Structure Investigation/Meteorology Package Experiment on the probe. During the Cassini-Huygens Project development, he became very active in coordinating with European Space Agency scientists as a Co-Investigator for the Huygens Probe Atmospheric Structure Instrument. He did not live to see the spacecraft arrive at Titan in 2005. After a three-month struggle with brain cancer, Seiff passed away on December 16, 2000.

From the guide to the Alvin Seiff Papers, 1955-2000, (Ames Research Center, )