[摘要] When the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) initiatedthe International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) project in 1968 it wiselyselected K. Rawer as its first Chairperson. With a solid footing andgood contacts in both the ground-based and space-based ionosphericcommunities he was ideally suited to pull together colleagues and data fromboth communities to help build the first version of the IRI. He assembled ateam of 20+ international ionospheric experts in the IRI Working Group andchaired and directed the group from 1968 to 1984. The working group has nowgrown to 63 members and the IRI model has undergone many revisions as newdata became available and new modeling techniques were applied. This paperwas presented during a special session of the Kleinheubach Tagung 2013 inhonor of K. Rawer's 100th birthday. It will review the currentstatus of the IRI model and project and the international recognition it hasachieved. It is quite fitting that this year we not only celebrate K. Rawer's 100th birthday but also the exciting news that his favoritescience endeavor, IRI, has been internationally recognized as an ISO(International Standardization Organization) standard. The IRI homepage isat
http://irimodel.org.
