Ronald William Prest Drever (26 October 1931 – 7 March 2017) was a Scottish experimental physicist. He was a professor emeritus at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

, co-founded the

LIGO The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Prior to LIG ...

project, and was a co-inventor of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique for

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

stabilisation, as well as the

Hughes–Drever experiment Hughes–Drever experiments (also clock comparison-, clock anisotropy-, mass isotropy-, or energy isotropy experiments) are Spectroscopy, spectroscopic tests of the isotropy of mass and space. Although originally conceived of as a test of Mach's pr ...

. This work was instrumental in the first detection of

gravitational wave Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that Wave propagation, travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravity, gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside i ...

s in September 2015. Drever died on 7 March 2017, aged 85, seven months before his colleagues

Rainer Weiss Rainer "Rai" Weiss ( , ; born September 29, 1932) is a German-American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitation, gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

Kip Thorne Kip Stephen Thorne (born June 1, 1940) is an American theoretical physicist and writer known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Pri ...

, and Barry Barish won the

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

for their work on the observation of gravitational waves. The trio of Drever, Thorne and Weiss shared several major physics prizes in 2016, so it is widely believed that Drever would have won the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

in the place of Barry Barish had he not died before the

Nobel Committee A Nobel Committee is a working body responsible for most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are six awarding committees from four institutions, one for each Nobel Prize. Five of these committees are working bodies ...

made their decision.

Education

Drever was educated at Glasgow Academy followed by

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

where he was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1953 followed by a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1959 for research on orbital electron capture using proportional counters.

Career and research

After receiving his PhD from the

in 1959, Drever initiated the Glasgow project to detect gravitational waves in the sixties, after which he established the University’s first dedicated gravitational wave research group in 1970. The same year Drever was recruited to form a gravitational wave program at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

. In 1984 Drever left

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

to work full-time at

. Drever's contributions to the design and implementation of the LIGO interferometers were critically important to their ability to function in the extreme sensitivity realm required for detection of gravitational waves (10⁻²³ strain). Drever's final work involved the development of magnetically levitated optical tables for seismic isolation of experimental apparatus. Ronald_Drever_Caltech_1993

Honors and awards

Drever was recognized by numerous awards including: * Fellowship of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

(1998) * Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002) * Shared the Einstein Prize (2007) with

* The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016) * The Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016) * The Shaw Prize (2016) (together with

and Rainer Weiss). * The

Kavli Prize The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation (United States), Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and r ...

in Astrophysics (2016).
Smithsonian, American Ingenuity Award
(2016) * The

Harvey Prize The Harvey Prize is an annual Israeli award for breakthroughs in science and technology, as well as contributions to peace in the Middle East granted by the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Technion in Haifa. The prize has become a ...

(2016) * Fellowship of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick University in Christiania was establis ...

Personal life

Ronald was a paternal cousin to cartographer and writer, Tim Robinson and paternal uncle of acoustic ecologist
John Levack Drever

Artistic inspiration

Robert Crawford wrote a meditation on the life of Ronald Drever.

References