biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1918–84)
|
| biography:
| Radio astronomer, born in Brighton, East Sussex, SE England, UK, the nephew of Gilbert Ryle. He studied at Oxford, and worked from 1945 on radio physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, becoming professor of radio astronomy (1959–82). His development of interferometers for radio astronomy enabled him to survey the most distant radio sources. In 1961 he challenged the then-popular steady-state theory of the universe, and paved the way for renewed interest in the ‘big bang’ theory. He was knighted in 1966, appointed astronomer royal in 1972, and shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 with his former pupil, Antony Hewish. |
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