Science
Harold Klein
Viking biology team leader
Also known as Harold P. Klein
Who they are
Harold Klein led Viking’s biology team and helped establish NASA Ames’s exobiology and life-sciences programs. His later review compared the assumptions and procedures of the mission’s biological experiments. This made the interpretation of Martian soil results a joint assessment across instruments rather than the verdict of a single test.
He links the organization of life-detection research to interpretation of Viking’s uncertain findings.
Selected contributions
Selected works
Academic paper · 1977 · Journal article; abstract inspected
The Viking biological investigation - General aspects
Klein reviews the assumptions and procedures behind Viking’s biological tests and their differing implications. The abstract makes clear that interpreting the mission required comparing experiments, not treating one chemical response as a settled detection.
Reading scope & citation
Fresh inspection: Complete NTRS catalogue record and abstract read; authorship H. P. Klein, 1977 publication and review of experiment assumptions. No downloadable full text at this record.
In the timeline
- Jul 20, 1976Viking lands laboratories to test Martian soil
Biography sources
- Viking Project and Astrobiology ↗NASA Science
- The Viking biological investigation - General aspects ↗NASA Technical Reports Server; Journal of Geophysical Research