Grote Reber
| Grote Reber | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
December 22, 1911 Wheaton, Illinois, United States |
| Died |
December 20, 2002 (aged 90) Ouse, Tasmania |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Radio astronomy |
| Alma mater | Illinois Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Pioneering work in radio astronomy |
| Notable awards | Elliott Cresson Medal (1963) |
Grote Reber (December 22, 1911 – December 20, 2002) was a pioneer of radio astronomy, which combined his interests in amateur radio and amateur astronomy. He was instrumental in investigating and extending Karl Jansky's pioneering work, and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequencies.
His 1937 radio antenna was the second ever to be used for astronomical purposes and the first parabolic reflecting antenna to be used as a radio telescope. For nearly a decade he was the world's only radio astronomer.
Reber was born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and graduated from Armour Institute of Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1933 with a degree in electrical engineering. He was an amateur radio operator (ex-W9GFZ), and worked for various radio manufacturers in Chicago from 1933 to 1947.
When he learned of Karl Jansky's work in 1933, he decided this was the field he wanted to work in, and applied to Bell Labs, where Jansky was working. However this was during the height of the Great Depression and there were no jobs available.
Grote Reber was an atheist.
In the summer of 1937, Reber decided to build his own radio telescope in his back yard in Wheaton. Reber's radio telescope was considerably more advanced than Jansky's, consisting of a parabolic sheet metal dish 9 meters in diameter, focusing to a radio receiver 8 meters above the dish. The entire assembly was mounted on a tilting stand, allowing it to be pointed in various directions, though not turned. The telescope was completed in September 1937.
Reber's first receiver operated at 3300 MHz and failed to detect signals from outer space, as did his second, operating at 900 MHz. Finally, his third attempt, at 160 MHz, was successful in 1938, confirming Jansky's discovery. In 1940, he achieved his first professional publication, in the Astrophysical Journal, but Reber refused a research appointment with Yerkes Observatory. He turned his attention to making a radiofrequency sky map, which he completed in 1941 and extended in 1943. He published a considerable body of work during this era, and was the initiator of the "explosion" of radio astronomy in the immediate post-Second World War era. His data, published as contour maps showing the brightness of the sky in radio wavelengths, revealed the existence of radio sources such as Cygnus A and Cassiopeia A for the first time. For nearly a decade from 1937 on he was the world's only radio astronomer, a field that only expanded after World War Two when scientists, who had gained a great deal of knowledge during the wartime expansion of RADAR, entered the field.
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