Head and shoulders image of Dr. Akira Hirose, Department of Physics.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. Akira Hirose was born in 1941 in Japan. He completed his BSc (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and MSc (Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics) at Yokohama National University in Japan. Dr. Hirose’s illustrious and prolific research career in the field of plasma physics was acknowledged with a Fulbright Scholarship in 1967, which he took up at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Hirose completed his PhD there in the Department of Electrical Engineering in 1969. He joined the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Physics as an associate professor in July 1977 following appointments as a research associate (1971–1975) and research scientist (1975–1977) in the Plasma Physics Laboratory. Dr. Hirose became a tenured professor in 1979, and later served as director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory (1994–2015) and department head of Physics and Engineering Physics (1998–2001). The U of S awarded him an earned Doctor of Science degree in 1994. Dr. Hirose died in Saskatoon in 2017.