Jansky Lecture 2000

V. Radhakrishnan

See More The Karl G. Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of Associated Universities, Inc., to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of astronomy. First awarded in 1966, it is named in honor of the man who, in 1932, first detected radio waves from a cosmic source. Karl Jansky's discovery of radio waves from the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy started the science of radio astronomy. This year's lecturer is Professor V. Radhakrishnan, former Director of the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, India. The lecture, entitled Astronomy's Devices, will focus on the instruments and devices that have allowed astronomers to make the spectacular scientific discoveries of the past half-century.

Professor Radhakrishnan will present the Jansky Lecture:

• in Socorro, New Mexico on October 27, 8:00 p.m. at the Macey Center on the campus of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
• in Tucson, Arizona on October 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the Steward Observatory auditorium on the campus of the University of Arizona
• in Charlottesville, Virginia on November 3, at 7:30 p.m. in the Gilmer Hall auditorium on the Grounds of the University of Virginia
• and in Green Bank, West Virginia on November 6, at 7:00 p.m. in the NRAO Jansky Lab auditorium.

About the Lecturer

In the course of his career, Prof. Radhakrishnan has worked at Caltech and in England and Sweden. In 1972, he returned to his native India to become Director of the Raman Research Institute, where he established internationally recognized research programs in radio astronomy and other fields.

Radhakrishnan, working with other astronomers at Caltech in the 1960s, pioneered new observational techniques for radio astronomy. In one of the first applications of those techniques, Radhakrishnan and Jim Roberts, an Australian working at Caltech, discovered intense radiation belts around Jupiter, belts that are an analog to the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth.

Shortly after the discovery of pulsars in 1967, Radhakrishnan interpreted specialized observations to provide convincing evidence that the newly-discovered objects are spinning, superdense neutron stars with intense magnetic fields. This interpretation now is the standard model presented in astrophysics textbooks.

Symposia

Coinciding with the lecture, the 16th Annual New Mexico Symposium will be held in Socorro on October 27, and the 5th Annual NRAO-UVA Jansky Symposium in Charlottesville on November 3.

More Information

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