Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell ( ; 31 August 19136 August 2012) was an English

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and radio astronomer. He was the first director of

Jodrell Bank Observatory Jodrell Bank Observatory ( ) in Cheshire, England hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio as ...

, from 1945 to 1980.

Early life and education

Lovell was born at Oldland Common,

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

, in 1913, the son of local tradesman and Methodist preacher Gilbert Lovell (1881–1956) and Emily Laura, née Adams. Gilbert Lovell was an "authority on the Bible" and, having "studied English literature and grammar", was still "bombarding his son with complaints on points of grammar, punctuation and method of speaking" when Lovell was in his forties. Lovell's childhood hobbies and interests included

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

and music, mainly the piano. He had a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

upbringing and attended Kingswood Grammar School.

Career and research

Lovell studied

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1934, and a PhD in 1936 for his work on the electrical conductivity of thin films. At this time, he also received lessons in music from Raymond Jones, a teacher at Bath Technical School and later an organist at Bath Abbey. The church organ was one of the main loves of his life, apart from science. Lovell worked in the

cosmic ray Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...

research team at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

until the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. At the beginning of the war, Lovell published his first book, ''Science and Civilization''. During the war he worked for the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) developing

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

systems to be installed in aircraft, among them H2S. In June 1942, following the crash in England of a Halifax bomber on a flight to demonstrate the H2S, Lovell aided in the recovery of the H2S's highly secret (and nearly indestructible)

cavity magnetron The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and subsequently in microwave ovens and in linear particle accelerators. A cavity magnetron generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons wit ...

from the plane's wreckage. All 11 on board were killed, including a number of his colleagues, notably EMI engineer Alan Blumlein. Despite the tragedy, Lovell resumed his work as the government considered the H2S radar critical to the war effort. At the end of the Second World War, Lovell attempted to continue his studies of

s 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

, near Goostrey in Cheshire. It was an outpost of the university's botany department and had been a searchlight station during the war. In the course of his experiments, he was able to show that radar echoes could be obtained from daytime

meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

showers as they entered the Earth's

atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...

and ionised the surrounding air. He was later able to determine the orbits of meteors in annual meteor showers to show they were in solar orbit and not of interstellar origin. With university funding, he constructed the then-largest steerable

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna (radio), antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the r ...

in the world, which now bears his name: the

Lovell Telescope The Lovell Telescope ( ) is a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey, Cheshire, in the north-west of England. When construction was finished in 1957, the telescope was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world a ...

. Over 50 years later, it remains a productive radio telescope, now operated mostly as part of the

MERLIN The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an interferometer array of radio telescopes spread across England. The array is run from Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire by the University of Manchester on behalf of UK Re ...

and European VLBI Network interferometric arrays of radio telescopes. Sir Bernard Lovell by Reginald Gray

In 2009, Lovell claimed he had been the subject of a

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

assassination attempt during a 1963 visit to the Soviet Deep-Space Communication Centre ( Eupatoria). He alleged that his hosts tried to kill him with a lethal radiation dose because he was head of the Jodrell Bank space telescope when it was also being used as part of an early warning system for Soviet nuclear attacks. He wrote a full account of the incident which, at his determination, was only published after his death.

Lectures

In 1958, Lovell was invited by the BBC to deliver the annual Reith Lectures, a series of six radio broadcasts called ''The Individual and the Universe'', in which he examined the history of enquiry into the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

and the origin of the universe. In 1959, he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the

Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland The Institution of Engineers in Scotland (IES) is a multi-disciplinary professional body and learned society, founded in Scotland, for professional engineers in all disciplines and for those associated with or taking an interest in their work. I ...

. He chose the subject "Radio Astronomy and the Structure of the Universe". In 1965 he was invited to co-deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on ''Exploration of the Universe''. In 1975 he gave the presidential address (''In the Centre of Immensities'') to the British Association meeting in Guildford.

Awards and honours

Lovell won numerous awards including: * 1946 –

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(OBE), for his work on H2S * 1955 – Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society * 1955 – Elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

* 1960 –

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society. Two are given for "the mo ...

of the Royal Society * 1961 –

Knight Bachelor The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised Order of chivalry, orders of chivalry; it is a part of the Orders, decorations, and medals ...

for contributions to the development of

radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies Astronomical object, celestial objects using radio waves. It started in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming from the Milky Way. Subsequent observat ...

* 1967 – Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science),

University of Bath The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. Bath received its royal charter in 1966 as Bath University of Technology, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University ...

* 1969 – Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh * 1969–71 – President of the Royal Astronomical Society * 1974 – Elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

* 1980 – Benjamin Franklin Medal * 1981 –

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded" and it can be awarded for any reason. Past awar ...

Lovell was a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

. Lovell has a secondary school named after him in Oldland Common, Bristol, which he officially opened. A building on the

QinetiQ QinetiQ ( as in '' kinetic'') is a British defence technology company headquartered in Farnborough, Hampshire. It operates primarily in the defence, security and critical national infrastructure markets and run testing and evaluation capabili ...

site in Malvern is also named after him, as was the fictional scientist Bernard Quatermass, the hero of several

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1 January 1927. It p ...

science-fiction serials of the 1950s, whose first name was chosen in honour of Lovell.

Personal life

In 1937, Lovell married Mary Joyce Chesterman (d. 1993) and they had two sons and three daughters. In later life Lovell was physically very frail; he lived in quiet retirement in the countryside, surrounded by music, his books and a vast garden filled with trees he planted many decades before. Lovell died at home in Swettenham, Cheshire on 6 August 2012.Sir Bernard Lovell
University of Manchester, 7 August 2012

Read also

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References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lovell, Bernard 1913 births Jodrell Bank Observatory 20th-century English astronomers Knights Bachelor English physicists Radio astronomers Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Officers of the Order of the British Empire Alumni of the University of Bristol Radar pioneers People from Bitton People from Malvern, Worcestershire Academics of the Victoria University of Manchester Royal Medal winners Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 2012 deaths Presidents of the Royal Astronomical Society People educated at King's Oak Academy Recipients of the Dalton Medal Members of the American Philosophical Society