Australian Institute of Physics - Tasmanian Branch

Winter Public Lecture Series in Physics

in honour of Alexander and Leicester McAulay

Cosmic Static

Dr Ken Kellermann
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA

8.00 pm Wednesday  24 September 2003
Physics Lecture Theatre 1
University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay

ABSTRACT:
Early transatlantic telephone conversations were plagued by a mysterious source of radio interference.  Experiments at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1932 discovered that the interfering signal was coming from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Over the following decade, only one man, Grote Reber, a young American engineer and radio amateur followed up on this work and became the world’s first radio astronomer.  Since then, radio astronomers, using ever more sophisticated instruments, have made a series of remarkable discoveries including the intense radio noise from the Sun, electrical storms on the planet Jupiter, powerful radio galaxies, quasars, pulsars, cosmic masers, gravitational lenses, the detection of gravitational radiation, the first extra-solar planetary system, and the cosmic microwave background radiation.  I will review the events leading up to these remarkable discoveries that have completely changed our understanding of the universe.

SPEAKER PROFILE:
Kenneth I. Kellermann is Chief Scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory where he works on the study of radio galaxies, quasars and cosmology, and on the development of new instrumentation for radio astronomy.  He also holds an appointment as a Research Professor at the University of Virginia and as an Outside Scientific member of the German Max Planck Society..

He received his S.B. degree in Physics from M.I.T. in 1959 and his Ph. D. in Physics and Astronomy from Caltech in 1963, after which, he spent two years at the CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney, Australia.  Since 1965 he has been at NRAO except for extended leaves at Caltech as a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Visitor, and in the Netherlands, Australia, and Germany.  He has served as the Assistant Director at NRAO and Director at the Max Planck Institute fur Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Dr. Kellermann is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) , a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He is a recipient of the Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Gould Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   He is a member of the International Astronomical Union, where he served as president of the Commission on Radio Astronomy, the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the Astronomical Society of Australia.

He was the former Chair of the NAS Astronomy Section and the US National Committee for the IAU.  He has served on the Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as well as other committees and panels of the NAS, NSF, NASA, and the European Space Agency.  He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the North-East Radio Astronomy Corporation and serves on the Editorial Board of the Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics. 

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This is a lecture in this year's Winter Public Lecture Series in Physics. The series started last year and is held in honour of Alexander and Leicester McAulay, two renowned Physics professors, who were inspiring teachers and did significant research at the University of Tasmania during the early years.

Further information is available from:

Prof. Bob Delbourgo, ph. (03)6226 2403, e-mail: Bob.Delbourgo@utas.edu.au  or  
Dr Elizabeth Chelkowska, ph. (03)622 62725, e-mail: Elizabeth.Chelkowska@utas.edu.au.

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