Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- THE EARLIEST YEARS
- Karl Jansky and the discovery of extraterrestrial radio waves
- Early radio astronomy at Wheaton, Illinois
- Optical and radio astronomers in the early years
- AUSTRALIA
- ENGLAND
- THE REST OF THE WORLD
- BROADER REFLECTIONS
- Biographical notes on contributors
- Name index
- Subject index
Karl Jansky and the discovery of extraterrestrial radio waves
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- THE EARLIEST YEARS
- Karl Jansky and the discovery of extraterrestrial radio waves
- Early radio astronomy at Wheaton, Illinois
- Optical and radio astronomers in the early years
- AUSTRALIA
- ENGLAND
- THE REST OF THE WORLD
- BROADER REFLECTIONS
- Biographical notes on contributors
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
On 27 April 1933 a small audience in Washington, D.C. heard a talk entitled “Electrical Disturbances of Extraterrrestrial Origin.” Today we view Karl Jansky's paper as the beginning of radio astronomy, but at that time it was neither the birth of a new science nor greatly acclaimed by Jansky's engineering and scientific colleagues. A week after his talk, Jansky wrote to his father:
I presented my paper in Washington before the U.R.S.I., or International Scientific Radio Union, an almost defunct organization. It was not my wish that my paper was presented there, but at Mr. Friis's [Jansky's supervisor] insistence.… The U.R.S.I, meetings in Washington are attended by a mere handful of old college professors and a few Bureau of Standards engineers. The meeting was conducted in such a manner… that not a word was said about my paper except for a few congratulations that I received afterwards. Besides this, Friis would not let me give the paper a title that would attract attention, but made me give it one that meant nothing to anybody but a few who were familiar with my work. So apparently my paper attracted very little attention in Washington.
To understand this lukewarm reception, we must examine Jansky and his work in the context of contemporary research into radio communications and astronomy. Such an examination reveals that this basic discovery was a misfit. Neither fish nor fowl, it was unable to be appreciated by either the scientists or engineers, and therefore lay untouched as an isolated curiosity.
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- Information
- The Early Years of Radio AstronomyReflections Fifty Years after Jansky's Discovery, pp. 3 - 42Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
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