science · 14 October 1984 · 40 years ago
death
Died 14 Oct 1984 at age 66 (born 27 Sep 1918).
English radio astronomer who worked on radar for British wartime defense. After WW II, he became a leader in the development of radio astronomy by designing revolutionary radio telescope systems to use for accurate location of weak radio sources. With his aperture synthesis technique of interferometry, he and his team located radio-emitting regions on the sun and pinpointed other radio sources so that they could be studied in visible light. Ryle observed the most distant known galaxies of the universe. His 1C - 5C Cambridge catalogues of radio sources led to the discovery of numerous radio galaxies and quasars. For his aperture synthesis technique, Ryle shared the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics (with Antony Hewish), the first such recognition of astronomical research. He was the 12th Astronomer Royal (1972-82).
OnThisDay.net