Martin Ryle

“I was educated at Bradfield College and Oxford, where I graduated in 1939.”

“In 1947 I married Rowena Palmer, and we have two daughters, Alison and Claire, and a son, John.”

“In 1959 the University recognized our work by appointing me to a new Chair of Radio Astronomy.”

“During the war years I worked on the development of radar and other radio systems for the R.A.F. and, though gaining much in engineering experience and in understanding people, rapidly forgot most of the physics I had learned.”

“We enjoy sailing small boats, two of which I have designed and built myself.”

“I was born on September 27, 1918, the second of five children.”

“I think that the event which, more than anything else, led me to the search for ways of making more powerful radio telescopes, was the recognition, in 1952, that the intense source in the constellation of Cygnus was a distant galaxy—1000 million light years away. This discovery showed that some galaxies were capable of producing radio emission about a million times more intense than that from our own Galaxy or the Andromeda nebula, and the mechanisms responsible were quite unknown. ... [T]he possibilities were so exciting even in 1952 that my colleagues and I set about the task of designing instruments capable of extending the observations to weaker and weaker sources, and of exploring their internal structure.”

“In 1948 I was appointed to a Lectureship in Physics and in 1949 elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College.”