Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish (born Fowey, Cornwall, 11 May 1924) is a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 (together with fellow radio-astronomer Martin Ryle) for his work on the development of radio aperture synthesis and its role in the discovery of pulsars. (Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Hewish's graduate student, was not recognized, although she was the first to notice the stellar radio source that was later recognised as a pulsar.) He was also awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1969.

His undergraduate degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge was interrupted by war service at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and at the Telecommunications Research Establishment where he worked with Martin Ryle. Returning to Cambridge in 1946, Hewish completed his degree and immediately joined Ryle's research team at the Cavendish Laboratory, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1952. Hewish made both practical and theoretical advances in the observation and exploitation of the apparent scintillations of radio sources due to their radiation impinging upon plasma.

This led him to propose, and secure funding for, the construction of the Interplanetary Scintillation Array, a large array radio telescope at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO), Cambridge in order to conduct a high time-resolution radio survey of interplanetary scintillation. In the course of this project, one of his graduate students, Jocelyn Bell, first noticed the radio source which was ultimately recognised as the first pulsar.

The paper announcing the discovery had five authors, Hewish's name being listed first, Bell's second. The Nobel award to Ryle and Hewish without the inclusion of Bell as a co-recipient was controversial, and was roundly condemned by Hewish's fellow astronomer Fred Hoyle. Others,^[who?] however, have noted that the prize was given to Ryle and Hewish for their work across the field of radio-astronomy as a whole, with particular mention of Ryle's work on aperture-synthesis, and Hewish's on pulsars.

Hewish was professor of radio astronomy at the Cavendish Laboratory from 1971 to 1989, and head of the MRAO from 1982 to 1988. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1968, and he and Martin Ryle were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974.

He developed an association with the Royal Institution in London when it was directed by Sir Lawrence Bragg, giving one of the Christmas Lectures and subsequently several Friday Evening Discourses^[1] and was made a Professor of the Royal Institution in 1977^[2][3]

Awards and honors

Hewish has Honorary degrees from 6 universities including Manchester, Exeter and Cambridge, is a Foreign Member of the Belgian Royal Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. His prizes include^[2]:

• Eddington Medal, Royal Astronomical Society (1969)
• Dellinger Gold Medal, International Union of Radio Science (1972)
• Nobel Prize for Physics (jointly) (1974)
• Hughes Medal, Royal Society (1977)

Hewish is a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Bibliography

• Hewish (1975), "Pulsars and High Density Physics.", Science 188 (4193): 1079–1083, 1975 Jun 13, doi:10.1126/science.188.4193.1079, PMID 17798425, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17798425 

See also

• Nobel Prize controversies

Notes & References

1. ^ Autobiography at NobelPrize.org
2. ^ ^{a b} Who's Who 2009 p1072
3. ^ but according to a search of the Royal Institution website he was Professor of Astronomy 1976-1981

External links

• Antony Hewish biography
• Autobiography at the Nobel Foundation
• Nobel speech
• Antony Hewish interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 26th March 2008 (film)