Bernard Lovell

Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; 31 August 1913Template:Spaced ndash6 August 2012) was a British physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.<ref name="natureobit">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="JBObit">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=rsbm>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Early life and education

Lovell was born at Oldland Common, Bristol, in 1913, the son of local tradesman and Methodist preacher Gilbert Lovell (1881–1956) and Emily Laura, née Adams.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref name = NYTimes>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Bernard Lovell- A Biography, Dudley Saward, R. Hale, 1984, p. 13</ref> Lovell's childhood hobbies and interests included cricket and music, mainly the piano. He had a Methodist upbringing and attended Kingswood Grammar School.<ref name=rsbm/><ref name="School days">Template:Cite web</ref>

Career and research

Lovell studied physics at the University of Bristol obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1934,<ref name = NYTimes /> and a PhD in 1936 for his work on the electrical conductivity of thin films.<ref>Index to Theses in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Theses.com (3 August 2012). Retrieved on 2012-08-21.</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lovell worked in the cosmic ray research team at the University of Manchester<ref name="doi10.1098/rspa.1939.0122">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> until the outbreak of the Second World War. 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 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 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

At the end of the Second World War, Lovell attempted to continue his studies of cosmic rays 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 Jodrell Bank Observatory, 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 showers as they entered the Earth's atmosphere 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 in the world, which now bears his name: the Lovell Telescope. Over 50 years later, it remains a productive radio telescope, now operated mostly as part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network interferometric arrays of radio telescopes.

Bernard Lovell

In 2009, Lovell claimed he had been the subject of a Cold War 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<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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,<ref name="reithlectures">Template:Cite web</ref> in which he examined the history of enquiry into the Solar System 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. He chose the subject "Radio Astronomy and the Structure of the Universe".<ref name="MacmillanLecture1959">Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Awards and honours

Lovell won numerous awards including: Template:Div col

• 1938 – Member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society<ref>Memoirs And Proceedings Of The Manchester Literary And Philosophical Society Vol-85 (1943) Volume LXXXV</ref>
• 1946 – Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), for his work on H2S<ref name=rsbm/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Bernard Lovell telling his life story at Web of Stories</ref><ref>Article about Bernard Lovell's life, by John Bromley Davenport in The Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2011.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1955 – Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society<ref name=rsbm/>
• 1955 – Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1960 – Royal Medal of the Royal Society
• 1961 – Knight Bachelor<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> for contributions to the development of radio astronomy
• 1967 – Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science), University of Bath<ref>Honorary Graduates 1966 to 1988 | University of Bath Template:Webarchive. Bath.ac.uk. Retrieved on 2012-08-21.</ref>
• 1969 – Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh<ref>Astronomical Society of Edinburgh, Lorimer Medal https://www.astronomyedinburgh.org/about-us/lorimer-medal/</ref>
• 1969–71 – President of the Royal Astronomical Society
• 1974 – Elected to the American Philosophical Society<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1980 – Benjamin Franklin Medal
• 1981 – Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
• 2009 – Dalton Medal of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society<ref>Memoirs And Proceedings Of The Manchester Literary And Philosophical Society Volume 152 2013-14</ref>

Lovell was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lovell has a secondary school named after him in Oldland Common, Bristol, which he officially opened.<ref name="secondary_school">Template:Cite web</ref> A building on the QinetiQ site in Malvern is also named after him, as was the fictional scientist Bernard Quatermass, the hero of several BBC Television science-fiction serials of the 1950s, whose first name was chosen in honour of Lovell.<ref name="quatermass">Template:Cite book</ref>

Personal life

In 1937, Lovell married Mary Joyce Chesterman (d. 1993) and they had two sons and three daughters.<ref name=rsbm/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lovell played the organ at St Peter’s Parish church in his home village of Swettenham, close to Jodrell Bank, and commissioned a Mander organ for the church.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Sir Bernard Lovell, University of Manchester, 7 August 2012</ref>

Read also

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External links

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