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Victor Francis Hess wasan Austrian-American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics,who discovered cosmic rays.

Hess was born to Vinzenz Hess and Serafine Edle vonGrossbauer-Waldstätt, in Waldstein Castle, near Peggauin Styria, Austria on 24 June 1883. His father was a royalforester in Prince Louis of Oettingen-Wallerstein's service. He attendedsecondary school at Graz Gymnasium from 1893 to 1901.

From 1901 to 1905 Hess was an undergraduate student atthe University of Graz, and continued postgraduate studies in physicsuntil he received his PhD there in 1910. He worked as Assistantunder Stefan Meyer at the Institute for Radium Research,Viennese Academy of Sciences, from 1910 to 1920.

In 1920 he married Marie Bertha Warner Breisky.

Hess took a leave of absence in 1921 and travelled tothe United States, working at the US Radium Corporation, in New Jersey,and as Consulting Physicist for the US Bureau of Mines, in WashingtonDC. In 1923, he returned to the University of Graz, and was appointed theOrdinary Professor of Experimental Physics in 1925. The University ofInnsbruck appointed him Professor, and Director Institute of Radiology, in1931.

Hess relocated to the United States withhis Jewish wife in 1938, in order toescape Nazi persecution. The same year FordhamUniversity appointed him Professor of Physics, and he later became anaturalized United States citizen in 1944. His wife died of cancer in1955. The same year he married Elizabeth M. Hoenke the woman who nursedBerta at the end of her life.

He retired from Fordham University in 1958and he died on 17 December 1964, in Mount Vernon, NewYork from Parkinson's Disease.