Born Sept. 27, 1918, and educated at Bradfield College and Oxford University in the U.K., Martin Ryle would go on to be the first astronomer royal (1972-1982) with a background in radio astronomy.

Sir Francis Graham-Smith in 2007: he carried out much important work on pulsars - Science Photo Library Sir Francis Graham-Smith, the former Astronomer Royal, who has died aged 102, was a pioneer of ...

An individual radio antenna has an angular field of view on the sky– informally known as ‘the beam’ – which can result in a very poor angular resolution at long wavelengths. Only the combined effect ...