J. A. Ratcliffe

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John Ashworth Ratcliffe, FRS (12 December 190225 October 1987), "JAR or Jack", was an influential British radio physicist. (Several sources mis-spell his name as Radcliffe)

He and his Cambridge University group did much pioneering work on the ionosphere, immediately prior to World War II. He was one of many leading radio scientists who worked at the Telecommunications Research Establishment during WW2. Martin Ryle, Bernard Lovell and Anthony Hewish were co-workers there, and Ryle and Hewish joined his radio-physics group at Cambridge after WW2. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1951.

From 1960 to 1966 he was Director of the Radio & Space Research Station at Slough.

Ratcliffe was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1976.