Sir bernard lovell biography of michael

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At the beginning of August he was about to take a vanload of equipment across France to the Pic Du Midi observatory in the Pyrenees when Blackett advised him not to go because of the situation on the continent. He was then posted for 6 weeks to Staxton Wold near Scarborough, one of the Home Chain radar stations which were to play such an important part in the Battle of Britain in During the cold winter of a Hudson aircraft carrying anti-submarine equipment ASV crashed, killing two of the Manchester colleagues who had accompanied Lovell to Bawdsey.

This badly affected him as realised by Blackett , however work on Radar continued, now under the auspices of the Telecommunications Research Establishment. It was during this time that Lovell suggested to Blackett that it might be possible to detect the ionisation trail left behind by a high energy cosmic ray shower with radar. Blackett encouraged Lovell to work on the calculations even though he was already working long hours on developing radar and a paper was duly published in Proc.

He was awarded for his efforts during the war with an Order of the British Empire in He was most proud of the work on ASV, since this led directly to a reduction in attacks on allied shipping in the North Atlantic. After the war, rather than continuing with work of a military nature, Lovell decided to go back to his research on cosmic rays at Manchester.

This involved a considerable cut in salary, and instead of being head of a large group of around highly technical personnel at the age of 32! He wanted to pursue the ideas that interested him in and so with the aid of ex-War Department radar equipment set up an experiment in the quadrangle of the University to look for echoes from cosmic ray showers.

Unfortunately radio frequency interference RFI from the electric trams rendered reception impossible. Lovell persuaded Blackett and the University to let him use a field at Jodrell Bank, out in the Cheshire countryside and used by the Botany department for experiments on plant growth. The equipment came out in mid- December ; a trailer from Park Royal in London got stuck in the mud the pond near the present Mk2 Telescope is called Park Royal Pond in memory of this event ; however echoes were soon detected.

Early in the echoes were found to be from trails left behind by meteors, and so a new research area was born. To this date cosmic ray showers have not been detected by radar techniques, though radio emission from the shower front itself has been detected and now used as standard technique for studying cosmic rays. Lovell and Blackett had overestimated the strength of the echoes, mainly due to the rapidity with which electrons are captured by air molecules in the lower atmosphere thus damping the echo, an effect unknown at the time.

Extensive work on meteors, radar detections of the moon and the Aurora Borealis followed, with the grounds at Jodrell Bank being covered in aerial arrays with high power radar systems in huts dotted around. Much of the equipment was ex-WD, and it was the job of a research student to recycle any components he could find from piles of electronics stored in wooden huts.

Most equipment was made on site, as commercial radars were very expensive. What was needed was a more sensitive detector, and so a ft diameter parabolic reflector pointing at the zenith was made using wire ropes, angle iron and chicken wire. Again cosmic rays were not detected, however surveys of the sky revealed a number of discrete radio sources, including HB9 - the Andromeda Galaxy.

In he gave the presidential address In the Centre of Immensities to the British Association meeting in Guildford. Lovell was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Beyond professional recognition, Lovell has a secondary school named after him in Oldland Common , Bristol, which he officially opened. In , Lovell married Mary Joyce Chesterman d.

In later life Lovell was physically very frail; he lived in quiet retirement in the countryside, surrounded by music, his books and a vast garden filled with trees he planted many decades before. Lovell died at home in Swettenham , Cheshire on 6 August Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools.

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. English physicist and radio astronomer — Oldland Common , Gloucestershire , England. Swettenham , Cheshire, England. Early life and education [ edit ]. Career and research [ edit ].

Sir bernard lovell biography of michael

Lectures [ edit ]. Awards and honours [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Read also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Bibcode : Natur. PMID Bibcode : Sci S2CID Retrieved 7 August Wolfram Research. Retrieved 22 November Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed.

Oxford University Press.