Daily Image
17-09-2007
Prof. Ronald Bracewell (1921-2007)
| Submitter: | Michael Garrett |
| Description: | One of the pioneers of radio astronomy, Prof. Ronald Bracewell, 86, passed away on 12th August 2007. Born in Sydney, Australia, Ron Bracewell served during the second world war as a microwave and radar engineer at CSIRO, before completing his PhD in Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, UK. Together with J.L. Pawsey, he published the first text book on "Radio Astronomy" (1955). He finally settled in Stanford, USA and began the construction of a 32-element solar interferometer that produced daily images of the Sun. This instrument played an important role supporting the Apollo programme, continuously monitoring potentially hazardous solar flare activity. Bracewell was active in a wide range of research right up until the time of his death. He was involved in SETI (e.g. his work on communicating with superior galactic communities) and was recognised as a pioneer in the creation of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). But for thousands of graduate students (and in particular radio astronomers, electronic engineers, medical imaging specialists etc.), Bracewell is perhaps best known for his classic and very(!) rigorous text-book: "The Fourier Transform and its Applications" (1965). The Fourier Transform expresses the relation between a function and its spectrum. It is perhaps, the most important single concept in astronomical instrumentation and is used every day by astronomers at ASTRON and JIVE to form radio astronomy images from interferometric data. Fourier Transforms are also key tools in searching for periodic phenomena and their use is wide-spread in digital electronics and signal processing. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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