Acclaimed NZ space scientist Sir Ian (77) was elected New Zealander of the Year in 1995. Also a Royal Society fellow he had, for over half a century, undertaken ground-breaking work in planetary science, comets and solar physics and his research made enormous contributions to the fields of plasma and space physics. He was the director of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany for 16 years and was also an associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and a fellow of the Academia Europaea. He was knighted in 1996 and is survived by his wife Joy and four children.