Ryle, Martin (1918–1984)
English radio astronomer (the first professor of the subject in Britain)
who shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics with Anthony Hewish
for the discovery of pulsars. He graduated
from Oxford and helped develop radar for British defense during World War
II before moving to the University of Cambridge, where he developed the
technique of aperture synthesis
and began a series of surveys of radio sources that were published as the
Cambridge catalogues, the best known of which is the third (objects in it
are preceded by the designation 3C). Ryle's counts of radio sources versus
brightness supported evolving universe cosmologies, and he became a leading
opponent of the steady state hypothesis. He was also an outspoken critic
of attempts to communicate with intelligent extraterrestrials (see CETI,
opposition to). Ryle served as the Astronomer
Royal from 1972 to 1982.
Related category
• ASTRONOMERS
AND ASTROPHYSICISTS
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