March 07, 2023

It is with great sadness that the family of Dr. Ken Money has announced his recent passing. 

Dr. Money was an elected Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) in 1985 and had been an active member of the Association for many years even after his retirement. He was awarded the Kent Gillingham Award by AsMA in May 2000 for his contributions to knowledge of disorientation and situational awareness in flight.
   Dr. Money retired as the Senior Scientist and Bioscience Director of the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine (predecessor of DRDC), Department of National Defence, Canada. He was a prolific and internationally well-known researcher in motion sickness, spatial disorientation, and vestibular physiology. He was recognized for having invented and demonstrated semicircular canal plugging, an experimental surgical operation used in North American and European hospitals to treat specific types of dizziness. He made significant contributions to the knowledge of the effects of alcohol on the inner ear (positional alcohol nystagmus) and the biological effects of spaceflight. He published over 110 scientific articles and authored six different topics for the World Book Encyclopedia and one for Microsoft Encarta.  
   Dr. Money worked with the NASA space program in 1962 and consulted as a scientific advisor to the U.S. agency. He was a co-investigator on a range of experiments on six Space Shuttle missions. He also launched Canada's initial medical experiments performed in space when the first Canadian astronaut flew aboard Shuttle mission STS-41G. He was one of the original six Canadian astronauts from the Canadian Space Agency (1984–1992). He served as an alternate payload specialist for Canada's flight on NASA Mission STS-42. He also served in the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserve Squadron as a pilot and retired as a Major. He flew a number of aircraft and helicopters and participated in a number of search and rescue operations. He was a Professor at the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, for many years teaching undergraduate and graduate courses.
   Dr. Money was the W. Rupert Turnbull lecturer, Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, in 1981 and was elected an Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) in 1984. He received the Wilber R. Franks award in 1986 from the Canadian Society of Aviation Medicine for his contributions to aviation medicine. In 1989, he was awarded the Grass Foundation Neurosciences Lectureship, Penn State University. He was the Wellmark Lecturer for the Canadian Association for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in 1992 and was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross in 1994 by the Governor General of Canada for his many contributions to science and technology.  On a personal note, Ken was a kind and generous mentor.