Tatsuzo Obayashi was a Japanese space physicist and professor at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), then attached to the University of Tokyo (Komaba campus). A specialist in the ionosphere and magnetosphere, he is known in particular, with Atsuhiro Nishida, for identifying the DP2 geomagnetic variation, a signature of solar-wind-driven magnetospheric convection. He wrote the introduction to the book's third part, on the colonization of space. His birth and death dates could not be established.