Bernard Lovell

For more information on Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell, visit Britannica.com.

British radio astronomer (1913–)

Lovell was born at Oldland Common and received his PhD in 1936 from the University of Bristol; in the same year was appointed as a lecturer in physics at the University of Manchester. In 1945, after war service on the development of radar, he returned to Manchester. He was elected in 1951 to the chair of radio astronomy and the directorship of Jodrell Bank (now the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories), a post he held until his retirement in 1981. He was knighted in 1961.

Lovell's first research was done in the field of cosmic rays. In the course of his work during World War II he realized that radio waves were a possible tool with which to pursue his studies. Thus in 1945 two trailers of radar equipment that had been used in wartime defense work were parked in a field at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire to begin radio investigation of cosmic rays, meteors, and comets. Lovell soon produced worthwhile results on meteor velocities and other topics and began to feel that a more permanent and ambitious telescope should be built.

Thus Lovell began a heroic ten-year struggle to finance a 250-foot (76-m) steerable radio telescope with a parabolic dish that would be able to receive radio waves as short as 30 centimeters. The main problem was to find sufficient funds to meet the rising costs of the project at times of government cuts. Thus in 1955 the project found itself £250,000 in debt. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research agreed to find half if Lovell could raise the rest. A public appeal failed to raise more than £65,000 and it required a strong public press campaign to move the Treasury to meet the outstanding costs in 1960, three years after the telescope was first used.

The Jodrell Bank telescope came to public notice when it was used to track the first Sputnik in 1957. It was not just an adjunct to the space program, however, but a major tool for astronomical research of which Lovell has given a full account in his Out of the Zenith (1973). He there showed the power of the giant telescope to supplement and advance the discoveries of others. Thus it was the Cambridge radio astronomers under Antony Hewish who discovered pulsars, but they were limited to observing them only for the few minutes each day that the pulsars were on the Cambridge meridian. The steerable Jodrell Bank telescope could observe objects for as long as they were above the horizon and it was no accident that of the 50 pulsars discovered in the northern hemisphere before 1972, 27 were detected at Jodrell Bank. So too with those other mysterious phenomena of the 1960s, quasars. Once more the initial discovery was made elsewhere but Jodrell Bank possessed the instruments to show that some quasars had angular diameters of one second of arc or less, which was surprisingly small for such prodigious sources of energy.

Lovell has written a number of important books recounting the story – political, financial and scientific – of Jodrell Bank. They include The Story of Jodrell Bank (1968), The Jodrell Bank Telescopes (1985), and his autobiography Astronomer by Chance (1996).

The English astronomer Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (born 1913) pioneered in radio astronomy and founded the Jodrell Bank Laboratory.

Bernard Lovell was born Aug. 31, 1913, in the village of Oldland Common (Gloucestershire), Great Britain. At the age of 20, he received his bachelor's degree in physics from Bristol University; three years later, in 1936, he received his doctorate, also in physics. He was appointed assistant lecturer in physics at the University of Manchester. In 1937 he married Mary Joyce Chesterman, a teacher, who collaborated with her husband in writing popular books on astronomy. They had two sons and three daughters.

At the outbreak of World War II Lovell joined the Air Ministry Research Establishment and soon became head of the blind-bombing and antisubmarine groups; in this capacity, he helped develop the use of airborne radar systems in Great Britain. At the end of the war, in 1945, Lovell returned to the University of Manchester as lecturer in physics. He rose rapidly through the academic ranks, becoming senior lecturer in 1947 and reader in 1949. His researches during these years were a direct outgrowth of his wartime researches on radar detection techniques combined with his desire to resume his prewar cosmic-ray studies.

Early Meteor Studies

When bouncing radio waves off cosmic-ray showers and detecting the echoes, Lovell observed many transient (short-term) echoes, which he concluded were from meteor trails. Carefully choosing a known comet with desirable characteristics, Lovell, in October 1946, directed his radar equipment skyward and proved beyond question that the transient meteor-trail echoes he had observed earlier were signals bounced off the tails of comets. His meteor studies lead to the discoveries that meteors orbited within the solar system (and did not come from beyond it), and that science was underestimating the number and intensity of daytime meteor showers.

Technical disturbing effects from the city of Manchester during this work convinced Lovell of the need for a country location, and he received permission to establish the Jodrell Bank Laboratory in Cheshire, of which he became director in 1951. That same year, a special academic chair was created for him at Manchester University: he became professor of radio astronomy. Using Michelson stellar interferometric techniques, Lovell proved that radio sources are constantly emitting "point sources" of energy, and not, as had been previously thought, diffuse interstellar clouds of ionized hydrogen. The previously detected fluctuations in radio sources were shown to be imposed on them by the earth's ionosphere, in much the same way as the earth's atmosphere causes the twinkling of a star at optical wavelengths.

Development of Telescope at Jodrell

The potentialities of radio astronomy were therefore clear, and in 1952 Lovell convinced the British government and the Nuffield Foundation to jointly finance the construction of the largest, completely steerable radio telescope in the world at Jodrell Bank, now part of the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratory. As it developed, the huge telescope, 250 feet in diameter, was completed in time to track the first artificial earth satellite, the Russian Sputnik, in October 1957. Communications work and future trackings, including that of the American manned moon landing in July 1969, gained for Lovell and Jodrell Bank a great deal of publicity. His work in radio astronomy led to the 1963 discovery of quasars and the development of knowledge about pulsars and red dwarf stars.

Beginning in 1958, Lovell carried out much research on the characteristics of flare stars. In 1960, he began collaborating with Fred Whipple of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in this work. In 1955 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1960 he received the Royal Medal of the society; and in 1961 he was knighted.

Further Reading

Sir Bernard Lovell, in collaboration with his wife, wrote a number of books on astronomy, one of the later being Discovering the Universe (1967). For his work on the radio telescope and for biographical information see Otto Struve and Velta Zebergs, Astronomy of the Twentieth Century (1962), and Colin A. Ronan, Astrnomers Royal (1969).

Additional Sources

The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1984, p. 101-102.

The Cambridge Dictionary of Scientists, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 210.

Lovell, Bernard, Astronomer by Chance, New York: Basic Books, 1990.

Lovell, Bernard, Emerging Cosmology, New York: Praeger, 1985.

Lovell, Bernard, In the Center of Immensities, New York: Harper and Row, 1978.

Lovell, Bernard, The Jodrell Bank Telescopes, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Lovell, Bernard, Man's Relation to the Universe, San Francisco, Freeman, 1975.

Lovell, Bernard, The Origins and International Economics of Space Exploration, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973.

Lovell, Bernard, Out of the Zenith: Jodrell Bank 1957-1970, London: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Lovell, Bernard, Voice of the Universe: Building the Jodrell Bank Telescope, New York: Praeger, 1987.

Graham-Smith, Francis and Bernard Lovell, Pathways to the Universe, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Saward, Dudley, Bernard Lovell: A Biography, London: R. Hale, 1984.

Sir Bernard Lovell
Image credit: Jodrell Bank, University of Manchester
Born	31 August 1913 (1913-08-31) (age 96) Oldland Common, Bristol, England
Occupation	Radio astronomer

Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell, OBE, FRS (born 31 August 1913^[1]) is an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.

Contents 1 Career 2 Awards 3 Bibliography 4 Footnotes 5 References

Career

Born in Oldland Common, Bristol, he studied physics at the University of Bristol, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1936. He worked in the cosmic ray research team at the University of Manchester until the outbreak of World War II, during which he worked for the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) developing radar systems to be installed in aircraft, among them H2S, for which he received an OBE in 1946.

He attempted to continue cosmic ray work with an ex-military radar unit and following interference from trams on Manchester's Oxford Road moved to Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey in Cheshire, an outpost of the university's botany department. He was able to show that radar echoes could be obtained from daytime meteor showers. With university funding he constructed the then-largest steerable radio telescope in the world, which now bears his name - the Lovell Telescope. Nearly 50 years later, it remains one of the foremost radio telescopes in the world.

He was knighted in 1961 for his important contributions to the development of radio astronomy, and has a secondary school named after him in Oldland Common, Bristol, which Sir Bernard Lovell officially opened.^[2] A building on the QinetiQ site in Malvern is also named after him.

Lovell is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.^[3]

The first name of the fictional scientist Bernard Quatermass, the hero of several BBC Television science-fiction serials of the 1950s, was chosen in honour of Lovell.^[4]

Awards

• 1946 — Officer of the Order of the British Empire
• 1960 — Royal Medal
• 1961 — Knighthood
• 1969 — Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh
• 1980 — Benjamin Franklin Medal
• 1981 — Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

Bibliography

• Lovell, Bernard (1952). Radio astronomy. Chapman & Hall. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1954). Meteor astronomy (International series of monographs on physics). Clarendon P. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1959). The Individual and the Universe. Oxford University Press. ISBN B0000CK81E (original) ISBN 0-19-286001-1 (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1962). The exploration of outer space. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-217618-8 (hardcover). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1962). Exploration of Space by Radio. Chap. & H. ISBN 0-412-06020-5 (hardcover). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1963). Discovering the universe. Benn. 
• Lovell, Bernard; T. Margerison (editors) (1967). Explosion of Science: Physical Universe. Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN 0-500-01038-2 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1967). Our Present Knowledge of the Universe. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0314-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-7190-0313-X (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1967). The explosion of science: The physical universe. Thames & Hudson. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1968). Story of Jodrell Bank. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-217619-6 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (Editor) (1970). Royal Institution Library of Science: Discourses, 1851-1939: Astronomy. Elsevier. ISBN 0-444-20102-5 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1973). The Origins and International Economics of Space Exploration. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-85224-256-5 (hardback) ISBN 0-470-54851-7. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1973). Out of the Zenith: Jodrell Bank, 1957-70. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-217624-2 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1975). Man's Relation to the Universe. W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-7167-0356-4 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1976). P.M.S.Blackett: A Biographical Memoir. The Royal Society. ISBN 0-85403-077-8 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1979). In the Centre of Immensities. Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-136780-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-586-08362-6 (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1980). Emerging Cosmology: Convergence. Greenwood Press. ISBN 1-58348-113-3 (paperback reprint) ISBN 0-03-001009-8 (paperback) ISBN 0-275-91790-8 (paperback) ISBN 0-448-15517-6 (hardback) ISBN 0-231-05304-5 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1985). The Jodrell Bank Telescopes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-858178-5 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1987). Voice of the Universe: Building the Jodrell Bank Telescope. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-275-92678-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-275-92679-6 (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard; Francis Graham-Smith (1988). Pathways to the Universe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32004-6 (hardcover). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1990). Astronomer by Chance. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00512-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-19-282949-1 (paperback) ISBN 0-333-55195-8 (hardback reprint). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1991). Echoes of War: The Story of H2S Radar. Adam Hilger. ISBN 0-85274-317-3 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard; Guy Hartcup (2000). The Effect of Science on the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-67061-2 (hardback) ISBN 1-4039-0643-2 (paperback). 

Footnotes

1. ^ GRO Register of Births: DEC 1913 5c 885 KEYNSHAM - Alfred CB Lovell, mmn = Adams
2. ^ "Sir Bernard Lovell School in Oldland Common". http://www.sirbernardlovell.s-gloucs.sch.uk/. Retrieved 2006-11-22. 
3. ^ "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Bernard Lovell". http://www.kva.se/en/Members/Ledamoter-page/?personId=658. Retrieved 2009-05-01. 
4. ^ Murray, Andy (2006) (paperback). Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale. London: Headpress. pp. 28. ISBN 1-900486-50-4. 

References

• "Lovell, Bernard (1913-)". Wolfram Research. http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Lovell.html. Retrieved 2006-11-22. 

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