Taylor, Joseph H, Jr.

Taylor, Joseph H(ooton), Jr.

(born March 24, 1941, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.) U.S. physicist. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. While teaching at the University of Massachusetts (1968–81), he and Russell Alan Hulse discovered the first binary pulsar (1974). Their discovery provided evidence in support of Albert Einstein's relativistic theory of gravitation, which predicts that objects accelerated in a strong gravitational field will emit gravitational waves. With its enormous interacting gravitational fields, the binary pulsar should emit such waves, draining energy and reducing the orbital distance between the two stars. In 1978 they showed, on the basis of tiny variations in the pulsar's radio emission, that the two stars are revolving ever faster and closer around each other at a rate agreeing precisely with Einstein's prediction. Their discoveries won the two men a 1993 Nobel Prize.