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29-07-2010
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In Memoriam: Don Backer (1943 - 2010)

Submitter: Joeri van Leeuwen
Description: Don Backer, radio astronomer and discoverer of the first millisecond pulsar, died in Berkeley on 25 July 2010. He was 66. Don was a professor in Astronomy at UC Berkeley and the director of both the Berkeley Radio Lab and the Allen Telescope.

After a PhD at Cornell and post-docs at NRAO Charlottesville and at Goddard, Don came to UC Berkeley in 1975.

In 1982 he discovered the prototype millisecond pulsar B1937+21, using Arecibo. Don was one of the first to recognize that gravitational radiation emitted by distant coalescing massive black hole binaries could be detected by long-term timing of such millisecond pulsars, and continuously pursued this research.

For four decades, Don was at the forefront of instrument development. He co-founded CASPER, the open source radio-astronomy signal processing research center.

In 2004, Don set up PAPER, an experiment to detect the radio emission from hydrogen in the early Universe. He presented first results and future plans at the ISKAF meeting in Assen, last month.

Don worked on both scientific and instrument projects with several of us at ASTRON. His energy and broad understanding of astrophysics were enthusing. His characteristic mid-sentence thinking pauses, his succinct insightful emails, and his scientific and personal openness will be dearly missed.

Copyright: Photo by Robert Rood
 
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