National Aeronautics and Space Administration Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Houston, Texas 77058
Biographical Data

Lodewijk van den Berg (Ph.D.)
Payload Specialist

PERSONAL DATA: Born March 24, 1932, in Sluiskil, The Netherlands. Married, with two children. He is a U.S. Citizen.

EDUCATION: Received a master of science in chemical engineering from Technical University, Delft, The Netherlands, in 1961; a master of science in applied science from the University of Delaware in 1972; and a doctor of philosophy in applied science from the University of Delaware in 1975.

ORGANIZATIONS: American Association of Crystal Growth, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

EXPERIENCE: Dr. van den Berg has over 20 years of research and management experience in preparation of crystalline materials, in particular, growth of single crystals of chemical compounds and investigation of associated defect chemistry and electronic properties. After van den Berg completed his Ph.D., he joined EG&G Corporation in Goleta, California, where he is responsible for the operation of a crystal growing facility. This facility produces various kinds of crystals via vapor transport methods. Dr. van den Berg is a co-investigator on the Spacelab-3 mission Vapor Crystal Growth System (VCGS) experiment. In that capacity, he is responsible for the crystal growth aspects of the VCGS experiment. Dr. van den Berg has intimate knowledge of VCGS and Fluid Experiment System (FES) hardware and has participated in all major design and science reviews of those sytems. He has broad experience in crystal growth and characterization including vapor transport, solution and melt growth techniques. He is an international Authority on vapor growth techniques with emphasis on mercuric iodide crystals and its application in the nuclear industry as gamma ray detectors.

SPACE FLIGHT EXPERIENCE: Dr. van den Berg flew on STS-51B Challenger (April 29-May 6, 1985). STS-51B, the Spacelab-3 mission, was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and returned to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It was the first operational Spacelab mission. The seven-man crew aboard Challenger conducted investigations in crystal growth, drop dynamics leading to containerless material processing, atmospheric trace gas spectroscopy, solar and planetary atmospheric simulation, cosmic rays, laboratory animals and human medical monitoring. At mission conclusion, Dr. van den Berg had traveled over 2.9 million miles in 110 Earth orbits, and logged over 168 hours in space.

MAY 1985

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