The Fairbanks aurora expert who helped expand Alaska tourism

When Syun-Ichi Akasofu walks by within the constructing on the College of Alaska Fairbanks campus that bears his title, I need to catch up and provides him a hug.

Why? For one, I actually like him. For one more, the longtime professional on the aurora is answerable for this hilltop construction through which I’ve written from a nice workplace for many of my profession.

This week, the 92-year-old Akasofu is receiving an honor for an achievement that’s not as apparent because the sun-catching constructing that homes the Worldwide Arctic Analysis Heart he dropped at life 1 / 4 century in the past.

Discover Fairbanks — a neighborhood tourism booster — is inducting Akasofu into its tourism corridor of fame. Leaders there cited Akasofu’s work in growing the native aurora tourism market, particularly amongst Japanese individuals.

Curious in regards to the aurora and prepared for journey, Akasofu got here to Fairbanks from Japan 64 years in the past when he was 28 years previous. Since then, he authored in all probability probably the most well-known paper ever written on the aurora, turned an professional on the northern lights and was the chief of the Geophysical Institute.

When that place was operating out of room within the Nineties, he raised tens of millions from sources as various because the Japanese authorities and the town of North Pole. With them, he helped create a grand constructing that turned dwelling to scientists finding out local weather change.

The Worldwide Arctic Analysis Heart turned an entity by itself. Akasofu was its first director. Throughout these years of fundraising, people-managing and writing scientific papers, he additionally helped improve a budding Alaska business.

Many Japanese individuals are fascinated by the aurora as a result of it’s hardly ever seen there, and other people suppose it’s a signal of excellent luck, stated Tohru Saito of the Worldwide Arctic Analysis Heart, a colleague of Akasofu’s.

“A lot of them say, ‘Earlier than I die, I’d like to have the ability to see it,’” Saito stated.

When he was director of the institute that housed a number of area physicists like himself, Akasofu labored with Japan Airways to constitution plane from Tokyo to Alaska. The planes full of individuals who needed to see the aurora.

“He would meet these vacationers and welcome them and discuss to them in order that they might perceive what it was they have been seeing,” stated Ron Inouye, a good friend of Akasofu’s and a UAF Rasmuson Library retiree.

Inouye additionally credit Akasofu with serving to others to find out about Frank Yasuda, who labored aboard the U.S. Income Cutter Service’s Bear on the flip of the final century. Yasuda and a bunch of Inupiat left Utqiaġvik and walked to the Yukon River to determine the group of Beaver. Novelist Jiro Nitta wrote “An Alaskan Story,” a preferred e book in Japan, about Yasuda. Akasofu was answerable for getting that e book translated into English.

“Japanese vacationers have a fascination with Yasuda and nonetheless enterprise (to Beaver),” Inouye stated.

From the time Akasofu heard a siren on the UAF campus that signaled Alaska had simply develop into the forty ninth state and thru his lengthy profession, Akasofu turned a dwelling conduit between Japan and his adopted dwelling in Alaska. That in all probability helped in making this small U.S. metropolis within the sub-Arctic a vacation spot for Japanese vacationers.

“Individuals in Japan are additionally happy with (a Japanese individual) making it huge,” Saito stated. “In that sense, he helped put Fairbanks on the map.”