Skip to main content

Arlin Krueger Maniac Lecture

Personal Photograph

Dr. Arlin Krueger graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 1955 with a BS in Physics. From 1959 – 1969, as a Research Physicist at Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, CA, he established a high altitude balloon program, developed an ozonesonde for meteorological rockets, obtained the first direct ozone soundings in the upper stratosphere since early V-2 rocket days, and collaborated in the first satellite soundings of ozone. He joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 1969 as Technical Officer for the Backscatter Ultraviolet (BUV) instrument, NASA's first space-based ozone probe carried on Nimbus-4 in 1970. BUV data confirmed the currently accepted theory of ozone chemistry. In 1976 he returned for his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University. Back at Goddard he developed the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), the instrument on the Nimbus-7 satellite that discovered the ozone hole over Antarctica, which proved ozone depletion by fluorocarbons. He then found that volcanic eruption sulfur dioxide plumes could also be mapped with TOMS. He retired from NASA in 2000 after a very successful career working on ozone and volcanology.
Dr. Krueger later joined the University of Maryland Baltimore County (2000-2010) as a research professor, where he developed the first near real-time public access to volcanic eruption and emission satellite data for hazard avoidance.