VERSIM - a Brief History
The VERSIM group had its origins in the 1950s as a committee of
Commission IV of URSI,
and in 1969 was established as a joint committee of Commissions III and IV on Whistlers in the Magnetosphere, chaired by D.L. Carpenter of Stanford University. Following the URSI
General Assembly
at Lima in 1975, the group was reconstituted as a joint working group of URSI and IAGA on Passive Electromagnetic Probing of the Magnetosphere,
under URSI Commissions G and
H
and IAGA Divisions II and III. The working group was endorsed by IAGA at its meeting in Grenoble later the same year and was constituted to have two co-chairmen, one from IAGA and one from URSI, as shown below:
| URSI Co-chairman | | IAGA Co-chairman |
|---|
| 1975-1981 | D.L. Carpenter | 1975-1981 | M.J. Rycroft |
| 1981-1984 | K. Tsuruda | 1981- | A.J. Smith |
| 1984-1996 | U.S. Inan | | |
| 1996- | M. Parrot | | |
The name of the working group was changed in 1989 to VERSIM (VLF/ELF Remote Sensing of the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere) which was endorsed by IAGA at its General Assembly in Exeter the same year, and by URSI at its General Assembly in Prague the following year. A further minor change of name (but not acronym) to VLF/ELF Remote Sensing of Ionospheres and Magnetospheres was accepted at the Lille URSI General Assembly in 1996.
Andy Smith, IAGA Co-chairman of VERSIM.
Last Revised 12 February 2002
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