Richard Hoover

Richard Brice Hoover (B.Sc.) (born January 3, 1943) is a scientist who has authored 33 volumes and 250 papers on astrobiology, extremophiles, diatoms, solar physics, X-ray/EUV optics and meteorites. He holds 11 U.S. patents and was 1992 NASA Inventor of the Year. He was employed at the United States' NASA Marshall Space Flight Center from 1966, where he worked on astrophysics and astrobiology. He established the Astrobiology Group there in 1997 and until his retirement late 2011 he headed their astrobiology research. He conducted research on microbial extremophiles in the Antarctic, microfossils, and chemical biomarkers in precambrian rocks and in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites.

Hoover is best known for having claimed three times (1997, 2007, and 2011) to have discovered fossilized microorganisms in a collection of select meteorites.

Hoover was born in Sikeston, Missouri on January 3, 1943. He obtained his B.Sc. degree with majors in physics, mathematics and French in 1964 from Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He did graduate work in theoretical mathematics at Duke University on an NSF fellowship translating the Nicolas Bourbaki French volume on multi-dimensional vector spaces, and was completing his thesis on X-ray diffraction in the Physics Department of the University of Arkansas when he left the University in 1966 to join NASA.

Working at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, beginning in 1966, Hoover has taken part in astrobiological research carried out there since 1997. In 1998, he participated in two of the astrobiology proposals funded by the newly formed NASA Virtual Astrobiology Institute. He was co-investigator with David McKay (PI) of the NASA Johnson Space Center on the study of biomarkers and microfossils in meteorites, astromaterials and ancient terrestrial rocks, and collaborated with Kenneth Nealson (PI) from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the investigation of microbial extremophiles from some of the Earth's most hostile environments as related to the co-evolution of planets and biospheres.

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