Bernard Lovell

Sir Bernard Lovell
Image credit: Jodrell Bank, University of Manchester
Born	31 August 1913 (1913-08-31) (age 98) Oldland Common, Bristol, England
Occupation	Radio astronomer

Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (b. 31 August 1913, Oldland Common, Bristol ^[1]) OBE, FRS is an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Career 3 Awards 4 Bibliography 5 References 6 See Also 7 External links

Early Life

Lovell's childhood hobbies and interests included cricket and music, mainly the piano.

Career

He studied physics at the University of Bristol, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1936. At this time he also received lessons from Raymond Jones, a teacher at Bath Technical School and later organist at Bath Abbey. The church organ was one of the main loves of his life, apart from science.^[2][3] He worked in the cosmic ray research team at the University of Manchester until the outbreak of World War II, during which he worked for the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) developing radar systems to be installed in aircraft, among them H2S, for which he received an OBE in 1946.^[4]

He attempted to continue his studies of cosmic rays with an ex-military radar detector unit, but suffered much background interference from the Electric trams on Manchester's Oxford Road. He moved his equipment to a more remote location, one which was free from such electrical interference, and where he established the Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey in Cheshire. It was an outpost of the University's botany department. In the course of his experiments he was able to show that radar echoes could be obtained from daytime meteor showers as they entered the Earth's atmosphere and ionised the surrounding air. With University funding he constructed the then-largest steerable radio telescope in the world, which now bears his name - the Lovell Telescope. Over 50 years later, it remains a productive radio telescope, now mostly operated as part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network interferometric arrays of radio telescopes.

In 1958, Lovell was invited by the BBC to deliver the annual Reith Lectures - a series of six radio broadcasts, titled The Individual and the Universe, in which he examined the history of inquiry into the solar system and the origin of the universe.

He was knighted in 1961^[5] for his important contributions to the development of radio astronomy, and has a secondary school named after him in Oldland Common, Bristol, which Sir Bernard Lovell officially opened.^[6] A building on the QinetiQ site in Malvern is also named after him.

In 2009, Lovell spoke of a claimed assassination attempt in Deep-Space Communication Center (Eupatoria) during the Cold War where the Soviets allegedly tried to kill him with a lethal radiation dose. At the time, Lovell was head of the Jodrell Bank space telescope that was also being used as part of an early warning system for Soviet nuclear attacks. Lovell has written a full account of the incident which will not be published until after his death.^[7]

Lovell is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.^[8]

The first name of the fictional scientist Bernard Quatermass, the hero of several BBC Television science-fiction serials of the 1950s, was chosen in honour of Lovell.^[9]

Awards

• 1946 — Officer of the Order of the British Empire
• 1960 — Royal Medal
• 1961 — Knighthood
• 1969 — Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh
• 1980 — Benjamin Franklin Medal
• 1981 — Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

Bibliography

• Lovell, Bernard (1952). Radio astronomy. Chapman & Hall. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1954). Meteor astronomy (International series of monographs on physics). Clarendon P. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1958) The Individual and the Universe BBC Reith Lectures
• Lovell, Bernard (1959). The Individual and the Universe. Oxford University Press. ISBN B0000CK81E (original) ISBN 0-19-286001-1 (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1962). The exploration of outer space. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-217618-8 (hardcover). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1962). Exploration of Space by Radio. Chap. & H. ISBN 0-412-06020-5 (hardcover). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1963). Discovering the universe. Benn. 
• Lovell, Bernard; T. Margerison (editors) (1967). Explosion of Science: Physical Universe. Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN 0-500-01038-2 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1967). Our Present Knowledge of the Universe. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-0314-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-7190-0313-X (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1967). The explosion of science: The physical universe. Thames & Hudson. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1968). Story of Jodrell Bank. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-217619-6 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (Editor) (1970). Royal Institution Library of Science: Discourses, 1851-1939: Astronomy. Elsevier. ISBN 0-444-20102-5 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1973). The Origins and International Economics of Space Exploration. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-85224-256-5 (hardback) ISBN 0-470-54851-7. 
• Lovell, Bernard (1973). Out of the Zenith: Jodrell Bank, 1957-70. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-217624-2 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1975). Man's Relation to the Universe. W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-7167-0356-4 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1976). P.M.S.Blackett: A Biographical Memoir. The Royal Society. ISBN 0-85403-077-8 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1979). In the Centre of Immensities. Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-136780-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-586-08362-6 (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1980). Emerging Cosmology: Convergence. Greenwood Press. ISBN 1-58348-113-3 (paperback reprint) ISBN 0-03-001009-8 (paperback) ISBN 0-275-91790-8 (paperback) ISBN 0-448-15517-6 (hardback) ISBN 0-231-05304-5 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1985). The Jodrell Bank Telescopes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-858178-5 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1987). Voice of the Universe: Building the Jodrell Bank Telescope. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-275-92678-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-275-92679-6 (paperback). 
• Lovell, Bernard; Francis Graham-Smith (1988). Pathways to the Universe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32004-6 (hardcover). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1990). Astronomer by Chance. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00512-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-19-282949-1 (paperback) ISBN 0-333-55195-8 (hardback reprint). 
• Lovell, Bernard (1991). Echoes of War: The Story of H2S Radar. Adam Hilger. ISBN 0-85274-317-3 (hardback). 
• Lovell, Bernard; Guy Hartcup (2000). The Effect of Science on the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-67061-2 (hardback) ISBN 1-4039-0643-2 (paperback). 

References

See Also

External links

• Bernard Lovell telling his life story at Web of Stories
• Article about Bernard Lovell's life, by John Bromley Davenport in The Daily Telegraph, 19 Apr 2011.

Jodrell Bank Observatory Timeline · Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics · Jodrell Bank Observatory Telescopes Lovell Telescope · Mark II · Mark III · MERLIN · Tenerife Experiment · Very Small Array Directors Bernard Lovell · Francis Graham-Smith · Rod Davies · Andrew Lyne · Phil Diamond Engineers Charles Husband Astronomers Robert Hanbury Brown · Roger Clifton Jennison Other Jodcast

Persondata
Name	Lovell, Bernard
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1913-08-31
Place of birth	Oldland Common, Bristol, England
Date of death
Place of death