Dr Joseph lade Pawsey
Joseph Pawsey was born in the rural town of Ararat, Victoria, in 1908, and was described as a young man of ‘an unusually inquiring mind’.
At 14, he won a scholarship to study in Melbourne, completed his BSc and MSc at the University of Melbourne, and completed his PhD at Cambridge, where he investigated the reflection of radio waves by the ionosphere.
In 1940, he joined CSIRO’s radiophysics group, where he led a research team developing radar systems during World War II.
By the time the war ended, the staff of the radiophysics laboratory had grown to more than 300 who were encouraged to remain and tackle peacetime projects.
Dr Pawsey took the opportunity to investigate a problem identified during the war — that radar could be jammed by radio waves, suspected to be related to sunspots.
His work, alongside Ruby Payne-Scott and Lindsay McCready, contributed to the new field of radio astronomy. He devised an instrument that could better detect radiation by combining two signals to form an interference pattern — Dr Pawsey called it the interferometer — and interferometry became the fundamental principle of many of the world’s radio telescopes.
In announcing the name of the Pawsey Centre in 2009, Senator Kim Carr reflected that interferometry allows astronomers to increase the strength and resolution of the signals they collect by arranging radio-telescopes into a linked array, and is the principle underpinning the two SKA telescopes.
Dr Pawsey may have been one of our greatest innovators in astronomy and physics, but he also understood the value of teamwork and collaboration.
Senator Carr said the Pawsey Centre would enshrine those values.
It will play a vital part in our great collective endeavour to understand the planet we live on and the universe beyond. It will be a place of shared discovery worthy of its name.
Dr Joseph lade Pawsey
Joseph Pawsey was born in the rural town of Ararat, Victoria, in 1908, and was described as a young man of ‘an unusually inquiring mind’.
At 14, he won a scholarship to study in Melbourne, completed his BSc and MSc at the University of Melbourne, and completed his PhD at Cambridge, where he investigated the reflection of radio waves by the ionosphere.
In 1940, he joined CSIRO’s radiophysics group, where he led a research team developing radar systems during World War II.
By the time the war ended, the staff of the radiophysics laboratory had grown to more than 300 who were encouraged to remain and tackle peacetime projects.
Dr Pawsey took the opportunity to investigate a problem identified during the war — that radar could be jammed by radio waves, suspected to be related to sunspots.
His work, alongside Ruby Payne-Scott and Lindsay McCready, contributed to the new field of radio astronomy. He devised an instrument that could better detect radiation by combining two signals to form an interference pattern — Dr Pawsey called it the interferometer — and interferometry became the fundamental principle of many of the world’s radio telescopes.
In announcing the name of the Pawsey Centre in 2009, Senator Kim Carr reflected that interferometry allows astronomers to increase the strength and resolution of the signals they collect by arranging radio-telescopes into a linked array, and is the principle underpinning the two SKA telescopes.
Dr Pawsey may have been one of our greatest innovators in astronomy and physics, but he also understood the value of teamwork and collaboration.
Senator Carr said the Pawsey Centre would enshrine those values.
It will play a vital part in our great collective endeavour to understand the planet we live on and the universe beyond. It will be a place of shared discovery worthy of its name.