Nobel Prize Recipient. Victor Francis Hess, an Austrian-born American physicist, received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly sharing the award with American physicist Carl David Anderson. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he received the coveted award "for his discovery of cosmic radiation." Recognizing that Anderson had advanced his discovery, Hess nominated Anderson five times for the Nobel candidacy. He received only four nominations for the Nobel candidacy. In a series of ten manned balloon ascents from 1911 to 1913, Hess discovered that the radiation increased rapidly with altitude. This finding suggested that radiation was not from the earth’s rocks as thought but from outer space origins. On April 7, 1912 during a near-total eclipse of the Sun, he documented that there was no decrease in radiation with no sun, hence the radiation was coming from beyond the sun. Nearly 25 years later, his find was recognized with a Nobel Prize. In 1925, Hess’s pioneer theory was confirmed by 1923 Nobel Prize recipient Robert Andrews Millikan, who gave the radiation the name of cosmic rays. Millikan and Anderson did research together with Anderson discovering the positron. Born in Waldstein Castle as the son of a Royal Austria forester, he received his entire education in Graz, starting with primary school before entering Graz University from 1901 to 1905, and in June of 1906 earning his Ph.D. degree in physics summa cum laude. He did post doctorate studies at the University of Vienna. Hess taught and conducted research at the universities of Vienna from 1910 to 1920, Graz from 1920 to 1931, and Innsbruck from 1931 to 1937. He took leave of absence in 1921 for two years to travel to the United States, working at the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey and as Consulting Physicist for the United States Bureau of Mines in Washington, D. C. In 1937 he and his Jewish wife escaped the persecution of the Nazi Forces as they invaded Austria, with the couple settling in the United States. He taught at Fordham University in New York City until 1958. In 1946 as a devoted Roman Catholic, he published an article, “My Faith,” on the subjects of science and God and confessing of his faith in God. He became an American citizen in 1944. During a drought in New York City in 1948, he was one of the six scientists that attempted to produce man-made rain. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the Lieben Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1919; Abbe Memorial Prize, Abbe Medal of the Carl Zeiss Institute in Jena in 1932, and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1959. In 1963 he received an appointment to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome. A moon crater was named in his honor. In 1928 he published one book “The Electrical Conductivity of The Atmosphere and Its Causes,” which has been translated to English and can be found online. In 1955 his wife died with cancer, and he remarried. He said that one of his greatest disappointments in life was when his New York driver’s license was suspended due to his poor vision. According to his obituary, he died of pneumonia as a complication of Parkinson’s Disease. A reporter for “Scientific Monthly” wrote: "After a decision had been made that the first significant work in the field of cosmic rays was to be honored by a Nobel Prize, there was certainly no living person who could for a moment be considered for the award except Dr. Hess."