Background
Hanna von Hoerner was born in Görlitz in 1942. Her father was the astrophysicist Sebastian von Hoerner.
Hanna von Hoerner was born in Görlitz in 1942. Her father was the astrophysicist Sebastian von Hoerner.
She founded the company von Hoerner & Sulger, which produces scientific instruments, notably dust analyzers used on space missions by European Space Agency and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. With his encouragement, she built an electrical circuit at the age of three years, repaired radios at the age of six years, and built an oscilloscope at the age of fourteen years. In the early 1960s, after finishing her Abitur, she moved with her family to the United States and worked as a research assistant at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, where her father was also working. In 1965, von Hoerner returned to Germany to study experimental physics at Heidelberg University.
She received her undergraduate degree in 1971 and her Doctor of Philosophy in 1974.
In 1971, she founded the company von Hoerner & Sulger, which is based in Schwetzingen and produces scientific instruments for use in space and medicine. The company would later receive commissions from European Space Agency and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Von Hoerner"s largest project was the design of COSIMA (Cometary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser), an instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft that analyses the composition of dust particles using secondary ion mass spectrometry.
Von Hoerner & Sulger had previously designed Canadian International Development Agency (Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer), a dust analysis instrument on board the National Aeronautics and Space Administration spacecraft Stardust, which launched in 1999. She died in Oftersheim on 4 July 2014, aged 71.