W. Vernon Jones
Born January 25, 1935
Died September 14, 2019
He earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics from the University of
Tulsa in 1963. He continued his studies and received a Ph.D. in Physics from the
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1967. He attained the position of
Professor Emeritus in 1988 from the Louisiana State University. Following his
career at LSU he joined NASA and for more than 30 years was Senior Scientist
for Suborbital Research with a focus on ballooning and cosmic ray research.
Paul Hertz
He followed Bachelor of Science degrees in both Physics and Mathematics from
MIT with a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1983. He joined the
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington DC as an astrophysicist, then
joined NASA in 2000. His research concentrated on X-ray emission from galactic
neutron stars, black holes, and globular clusters. He authored or co-authored over
100 papers, including observational papers in every band of the electromagnetic
Appendix 2: Scientists and Engineers in Ballooning 277