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Sir Martin Ryle
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Sir Martin Ryle was born in Brighton, Sussex, England, on September 27, 1918.
He was educated at Bradfield College and the
University of Oxford, where he
graduated in 1939. During the war periods, he worked on the development of
radar and other radio systems for the Royal Air Force.
In 1945 J.A. Ratcliffe invited Ryle to work at the
Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge,
starting an investigation of the radio emission from the Sun, which had recently
been discovered accidentally with radar equipment. In 1948 Ryle was appointed to a
Lectureship in Physics and in 1949 elected to a Fellowship at
Trinity College,
Cambridge. In 1959 he was appointed as a new Professor of Radio Astronomy, and in
1972 was appointed Astronomer Royal.
Ryle enjoyed working at the Cavendish, where both Ratcliffe and
Sir Lawrence Bragg
gave him enormous support and encouragement. Through many years of hard work and
testing, Ryle developed revolutionary radio telescope systems, including the
aperture synthesis technique, using them for accurate location of weak radio
sources. With this novel equipment, he observed the most distant known galaxies
of the universe. His contributions led to the discovery of numerous radio
galaxies and quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources). Ryle and
Antony Hewish
shared the Nobel Prize for Physics 1974, the first Nobel prize awarded in
recognition of astronomical research, "for their pioneering research in radio
astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the
aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery
of pulsars".
In 1947 he married Rowena Palmer, and they had two daughters and a son. Ryle
received many medals, including the Gold Medal, Royal Astronomical Society,
London, in 1964, and the Royal Medal, Royal Society of London in 1973. He was
knighted in 1966. Ryle had honorary doctorate degrees from University of
Strathclyde, University of Oxford and Nicholas University of Torun, Poland.
His favourite hobbies were sailing and building small boats. He died in 1984.
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