Ryle, Sir Martin

Ryle, Sir Martin

(born Sept. 27, 1918, Brighton, Sussex, Eng.—died Oct. 14, 1984, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) British radio astronomer. After receiving a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oxford, he helped design radar equipment during World War II. He was an early investigator of extraterrestrial radio signals. Ryle guided the Cambridge radio astronomy group in the production of radio source catalogs. The Third Cambridge Catalogue (1959) helped lead to the discovery of the first quasar. To map distant radio sources, he developed a technique called aperture synthesis, which provided tremendously increased resolving power for radio telescopes and was used to locate the first pulsar. In 1974 he and Antony Hewish shared a Nobel Prize.