From radar to astronomy
Ryle graduated from Oxford in 1939 and worked on radar and radio systems during the Second World War. In 1945 he joined the Cavendish research community in Cambridge to investigate radio emission from the Sun and other celestial sources.
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Aperture synthesis
He developed interferometric and aperture-synthesis methods that combined signals measured at different antenna positions, using Earth’s rotation to change the observing geometry. These methods improved angular resolution and enabled detailed surveys of radio sources and galaxies.
Radio astronomy at Cambridge
Ryle became Cambridge’s professor of radio astronomy in 1959 and Astronomer Royal in 1972. The 1974 Nobel Prize recognised his observational and instrumental contributions alongside Hewish’s role in the discovery of pulsars.