When he was a child, he participated every Easter in the rocket war in Vrontados, Chios. No one could imagine that one day he would make rockets, which would not just reach the opposite church, but would travel to our solar system! Stamatis Krimigis is 73-years-old and is still dealing with pioneer researches and applications in NASA. His CV is quite long and he has been awarded many times with several titles. President of the International Academy of Astronautics, honorary director at the Space Department of the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (USA), National Representative of Greece in the European Space Agency (ESA), member of the Academy of Athens are only some of the successful scientist’s titles.
In 1999, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named an asteroid after the Greek scientist (“8323 Krimigis”). In 2002, during the International Space Development Conference he was honored with the Cospar Space Science Award, which is the highest honor given by the international space community. He has also awarded twice with the NASA Gold Medal and with other certificates for excellent scientific achievement by other companies. Greece honored him in 1995 with the Phoenix Gold Cross. “When you do research in space throughout your whole life, if you are not optimistic about the machines you make, then you can’t work like that. But, the most important is to have partners who are able to offer and whom you can trust”, the scientist says.
Stamatis Krimigis moved to the USA at the age of 19 to attend college. In 1961 he gained a Physics diploma from the University of Iowa, where he worked as a professor of Physics and Astronomy. In 1968 he became head of the Space Physics and Space Instruments Team of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. He has been selected several times by NASA as head researcher of many scientific teams for the design and the construction of the machines for its pioneer spacecrafts “Voyager-1” and “Voyager-2”, “Galileo”, “Cassini” and many others. Two days ago, Stamatis Krimizis was nominated honorary professor of the International University of Greece, in Thessaloniki.
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