Martin Ryle

Sir Martin Ryle (1918-1984) was an English radio astronomer who shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics with Antony Hewish, the first Nobel Prize given for astronomical research. Ryle pioneered aperture synthesis, a technique that combines signals from multiple smaller radio telescopes to simulate the resolving power of a much larger instrument, and in 1946, working with Derek Vonberg, he published some of the first interferometric radio astronomy measurements. He founded and directed the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory at Cambridge and became the university's first Professor of Radio Astronomy, using his synthesis techniques to compile catalogues of distant radio galaxies and quasars that provided early evidence against the steady-state model of the universe. Ryle served as the twelfth Astronomer Royal from 1972 to 1982, and later devoted increasing attention to public debate over nuclear weapons and energy policy.