Martin Ryle - Astronomy

Astronomy

Martin Ryle was undoubtedly one of the great astronomers of the 20th Century. He was sometimes considered difficult to work with - in fact he often worked in an office at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory to avoid disturbances from other members of the Cavendish Laboratory and to avoid getting into heated arguments, as Ryle had a hot temper. Ryle worried that Cambridge would lose its standing in the radio astronomy community as other radio astronomy groups had much better funding, so he encouraged a certain amount of secrecy about his aperture synthesis methods in order to keep an advantage for the Cambridge group.

Ryle had a famous heated argument with Fred Hoyle of the Institute of Astronomy about Hoyle's Steady State Universe (see also the note on the 2C source survey), which somewhat restricted collaboration between the Cavendish Radio Astronomy Group and the Institute of Astronomy during the 1960s.

Ryle also authored a couple of short books on Nuclear Proliferation ('Politics of Nuclear Disarmament') where he argues that the only way to save the planet Earth from complete nuclear annihilation is to ban the use of any nuclear devices indefinitely. Ryle was a Amateur radio operator and held the GB-Callsign G3CY.