Martin Ryle - Biography

Biography

He was born in Brighton, the son of Professor John Alfred Ryle and Miriam (née Scully) Ryle. He is also the nephew of the famous Oxford University Professor of Philosophy Gilbert Ryle (Gilbert Ryle and John Alfred Ryle were brothers).

After earning a physics degree at the University of Oxford in 1939, Ryle worked with the Telecommunications Research Establishment on the design of antennas for airborne radar equipment during World War II. After the war he received a fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory.

The focus of early work in Cambridge was on radio waves from the Sun. Ryle's interest quickly shifted to other areas, however, and to explore those he decided early on that the Cambridge group should develop new observing techniques. As a result, Ryle was the driving force in the creation and improvement of astronomical interferometry and aperture synthesis, which have contributed immensely to upgrading the quality of radio astronomical data. In 1946 he built the first multi-element astronomical radio interferometer.

He guided the Cambridge radio astronomy group in the production of several important radio source catalogues. For example, the Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources (3C) 1959 helped lead to the discovery of the first quasi-stellar object (quasar).

While serving as university lecturer in physics at Cambridge from 1948 to 1959, Ryle became director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory 1957, and professor of radio astronomy in 1959. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1952, was knighted in 1966, and succeeded Sir Richard Woolley as Astronomer Royal (1972–82). Ryle and Antony Hewish shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, the first Nobel prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research. In 1968 he served as professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London.

Sir Martin Ryle died on 14 October 1984, in Cambridge. He had married Rowena Palmer in 1947.