Bernard Lovell

Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (1913-2012) was a British physicist and radio astronomer who founded and directed the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England, from 1945 to 1980. Lovell began his radio astronomy work using leftover wartime radar equipment to study cosmic rays and meteor trails, and he championed the construction of the Lovell Telescope, a large steerable radio dish that became operational in 1957, just in time to track the launch of Sputnik 1 and establish Jodrell Bank as an internationally significant tracking and research station during the early Space Age. Under his leadership the observatory contributed to tracking early Soviet and American space probes and became one of the world's leading centers for radio astronomy research. Lovell's decades of leadership helped establish radio astronomy as a mainstream discipline and secured Jodrell Bank's lasting role in both pure astronomical research and space-tracking support.