Yoram Kaufman; NASA scientist studied aerosols

WASHINGTON -- Yoram Kaufman, a leading scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center whose research has led to greater understanding of global warming, died May 31 at Prince George's Hospital Center in Maryland. He was seriously injured May 26 when he was struck by an automobile while riding his bicycle near the Goddard center's campus in Greenbelt. He died one day before his 58th birthday.

Dr. Kaufman began working at the space flight center in 1979 and spent his entire career there as a research scientist. His primary fields were meteorology and climate change, with a specialty in analyzing aerosols -- airborne solid and liquid particles in the atmosphere. In recent years, he was senior atmospheric scientist in the Earth-Sun Exploration Division and played a key role in the development of NASA's Terra satellite, which collects data about the atmosphere.

Franco Einaudi, director of the division in which Dr. Kaufman worked, said the space flight center had lost ``a superstar."

``He's one of those individuals that cannot be replaced," Einaudi said. ``He had a combination of characteristics. He was an outstanding scientist, an outstanding communicator, and a leader. That's very rare."

From 1997 to 2001, Dr. Kaufman was project scientist for Terra, the flagship satellite of NASA's Earth Observing System, which includes three satellites that monitor conditions affecting the Earth's climate. Dr. Kaufman helped develop the experiments and instrumentation of the $1.3 billion satellite, which was launched in December 1999.

In the past six years, the satellite has returned a wealth of information to scientists, as well as detailed images of fires, volcanoes, dust storms, and other climatological events showing that airborne particles can travel across continents and oceans.

Dr. Kaufman wrote more than 200 scientific papers.