Ryle, Sir Martin (1918-1984), was the British Astronomer Royal from 1972 to 1982. As a physicist, he became well known for his work on telecommunications and radio astronomy (the study of stars using radio waves). He designed equipment to detect extremely weak radio signals from outer space. For this work he received half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974. He shared the prize with another British radio astronomer, Anthony Hewish (see Hewish, Antony ).
Ryle was born in Brighton (now Brighton and Hove), England, and educated at Bradfield College and Oxford University. He became a fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded the society’s Hughes Medal in 1954. He was made professor of radio astronomy at Cambridge in 1959 and was knighted in 1966.
