Grote Reber was born on
December 22, 1911 in Wheaton, Illinois and died December 20th, 2002 in Ouse
Tasmania, Australia. Mr. Grote Reber having
been raised in Chicago went to and graduated from The Armour Institure of
Technology in 1933 with a degree in electrical engineering. He had
always had a passion for Radio and exploring the world through a different light,
he received his 1st radio license when he was just 16. He was
really inspired by Karl Jansky and his work in the radio field of astronomy, he
was fascinated with his discover of radio waves from our galaxy. He
theorized that radio waves could be found outside of our galaxy just as they
were in our own.
In
his early years getting out of college Grote tried to get a job with Karl
Jansky working at the Bell Labs, but was unable to due to the Great Depression
being at its high point at that time, no one was hiring. It was then
that Grote decided to build his 1st satellite the summer of
37’, it was 31 feet across and at the time was the largest and most advanced
radio telescope in the world. Using his knowledge of electrical
engineering Grote knew that the telescope would need a curved face in order to
focus the radio waves into one readable point.
Grote discovered astronomical objects that emit light in the radio
spectrum such as the ones in Cygnus and Cassiopeia. He was the 1st person in the world
to scan the night sky in Radio waves in 1938 to 2943, he published his results
in both fields engineering and astronomy afterwards. His later work revolved around
very low frequency waves, ones that can on penetrate Earth’s ionosphere at
times of low solar activity, leading to his final resting place Tasmania, Australia
where he lived for many years.
Mr. Grote Reber was inducted as a member of the American
Astronomical Society. In 1962 he received the Bruce Gold medal of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific and was also the American Society Russel Lecturer.
Mr. Reber received the Elliot gold medal from the Franklin Institute of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. In 1983, he
was awarded with the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical
Society. Mr. Reber still lives on, in
his legacy; he has an asteroid named after him, they made a Grote Reber Medal,
and a Grote Reber Museum was opened at the Mount Pleasant Radio
Observatory, Cambridge, Tasmania, opened
the 20th of January 2008.
