Yesterday I had the great opportunity to be present at a ceremony commemorating the first radio astronomer: Grote Reber. After his death in 2002 (just shy of his 91st birthday), his ashes have been sent to the major radio observatories around the world. The Dwingeloo Radio Observatory here at ASTRON is one of those locations.
As part of this ceremony, several of Grote Reber’s friends came and gave presentations on his life, including Dave Jauncey (from the Australia Telescope National Facility) and Ken Kellermann (from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory). Oddly enough, I’d never heard of Grote Reber before being invited to this ceremony, but after hearing the presentations, I learned how much he contributed to the area of astronomy in which I’m working.
After the presentations about Grote Reber, there was a short presentation about LOFAR, which will be operating in the low-frequency range in which Grote did most of his work. At the conclusion of this talk, we all went outside to the radio telescope where the plaque commemorating Grote and his ashes was unveiled.
It was a very nice ceremony and I am glad I was able to attend. If you have the opportunity to read more about Grote Reber, he was quite a scientist. He published around 70 scientific papers. While the number isn’t particularly impressive today, most of his papers were single author, which is impressive. Also, he published papers in ~30 journals, which is also impressive given most scientists today only publish papers in a few journals close to their main field.
EDIT (30 July 2007): A picture of the plaque unveiling is now online.
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