Grote Reber dies.

[AgoraBasta]

Вот что по этому поводу имел сказать Anthony Peratt:


Subject: Grote Reber 1912-2002


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Jake Griffin
Daily Herald

http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intID=376177

The news of Grote Reber's passing has just come to the attention of the space and plasma science communities.

It is a great disappointment that Grote Reber's major achievement, the invention of the parabolic antenna or 'dish' that now 'covers' the Earth's major cities as-well-as its remotest communities, never really received the recognition it merited.

These 'Reber Dishes' make possible the communication between disparate points on earth, often not possible by radio or telephone lines, by relaying a signal via Earth orbiting satellites. The affect in information transmission and direct communication has profoundly changed nearly every aspect of human endeavor, from commerce to agriculture. Perhaps the remaining technological item not yet, but soon to be, affected by the use of Reber Dishes are cellular telephones.

The invention of the Reber Dish was inspired by a purpose: to look for radio signals from space. Karl Jansky, a radio engineer and member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), serendipitously discovered the presence of 'star noise' while working as an antenna engineer at Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey in 1932-1933.

The 'star noise' was the first recording of radio emissions from the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery immediately received considerable attention and publication by the Institute of Radio Engineer's (IRE), predecessors of the IEEE. For this discovery, Jansky was named a Fellow of the IEEE.

But only Grote Reber on a farm in Wheaton, Illinois, followed up Janksy's discovery. To do this he invented an antenna that resembled in no way the wire antennas in use at the time. It was shaped like a dish to focus radio waves from space to a central detector within the dish. It worked as designed and was the progenitor of all dish antennas, including those used for aircraft detection by all adversaries in World War II. The original dish now stands outside the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, West Virginia.

For several years Reber toured astronomical institutes seeking support for his measurements. But the idea was dismissed by astronomers as being 'at best a mistake, at worst a hoax.'

For the last few years, I and others in the space plasma community tried to call Reber's accomplishment to the attention of the Nobel Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. It was however at a plasma conference in Buenos Aires where one of my colleagues from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and on the Nobel Prize selection committee, that Reber had indeed been considered for the Nobel Prize in Physics. In my colleague's words, 'Reber had not received the prize basically for two reasons: He was not attached to any Institute and he was an outspoken critic of the astronomers 'big-bang' universe theory.'

Anthony Peratt
Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
Former Vice-President, IEEE Executive Committee for Nuclear and Plasma Sciences
Fellow of the IEEE

[Самодуров Владимир]

Да, это большая потеря.
Фактически, именно он был первым радиоастрономом в современном смысле этого слова. Янски лишь открыл радиоизлучение из космоса, а вот первые радиокарты неба, первые списки источников на нем, первые крупные антенны - это все Ребер.
И - он был любителем (!) - все радиотелескопы построил на свои средства! И занимался радиоастрономией - как хобби! По масштабам это фигура, равная Гершелю...

[AgoraBasta]

И - он был любителем (!) ...

Его "любительство" было частично вынужденным, так он мог думать и действовать свободно и не зажиматься в тоталитарных рамках mainstream'a.
Да и вообще - если бы все научники работали на свои деньги, а не ждали подачек за "политкорректные" изыскания - вся наука выглядела бы совсем иначе. Только вот - нереальна такая альтернатива...