约瑟夫·泰勒

生平

泰勒在1968年获得哈佛大学学位。1969年至位于阿摩斯特的麻州大学物理学与天文学系任教，他参与五大电波天文台的建造工作。此天文台位于波多黎各的阿雷西波，2016年之前是世界上最大的望远镜。泰勒实验室早期的一个项目是用他有系统地找脉冲星，他们发现40个新的脉冲星，其中之一是PSR1913+16。

Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. (born March 29, 1941) is an American astrophysicist. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics with Russell Alan Hulse "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation". This was the first indirect detection of gravitational waves, later directly detected by Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss.

Early life and education

Taylor was born in Philadelphia to Joseph Hooton Taylor Sr. and Sylvia Evans Taylor, both of whom had Quaker roots for many generations, and grew up in Cinnaminson Township, New Jersey. He attended the Moorestown Friends School in Moorestown Township, New Jersey, where he excelled in math.

He received a B.A. in physics at Haverford College in 1963, and a Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 1968. After a brief research position at Harvard, Taylor went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, eventually becoming Professor of Astronomy and Associate Director of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Taylor's thesis work was on lunar occultation measurements. About the time he completed his Ph.D., Jocelyn Bell (who is also a Quaker) discovered the first radio pulsars with a telescope near Cambridge, England.

Career

Taylor immediately went to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's telescopes in Green Bank, West Virginia, and participated in the discovery of the first pulsars discovered outside Cambridge. Since then, he has worked on all aspects of pulsar astrophysics.

In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered the first pulsar in a binary system, named PSR B1913+16 after its position in the sky, during a survey for pulsars at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Although it was not understood at the time, this was also the first of what are now called recycled pulsars: Neutron stars that have been spun-up to fast spin rates by the transfer of mass onto their surfaces from a companion star.

The orbit of this binary system is slowly shrinking as it loses energy because of emission of gravitational radiation, causing its orbital period to speed up slightly.……

Amateur radio

Joe Taylor first obtained his amateur radio license as a teenager, which led him to the field of radio astronomy. Taylor is well known in the field of amateur radio weak signal communication and has been assigned the call sign K1JT by the FCC. He had previously held the callsigns K2ITP, WA1LXQ, W1HFV, and VK2BJX (the latter in Australia).

His amateur radio accomplishments have included mounting an 'expedition' in April 2010 to use the Arecibo Radio Telescope to conduct moonbounce with amateurs around the world using voice, Morse code, and digital communications.

He has been active in developing several computer programs and communications protocols, including WSPR and WSJT ("Weak Signal/Joe Taylor"), a software package and protocol suite that utilizes computer-generated messages in conjunction with radio transceivers to communicate over long distances with other amateur radio operators.

Honors and awards

Heineman Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1980)(inaugural)

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982)

Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1985)

Tomalla Foundation Prize (1987)

Magellanic Premium (1990)

Albert Einstein Medal (1991)

John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science of the National Academy of Sciences (1991) (physics)

Wolf Prize in Physics (1992)

Member of the American Philosophical Society (1992)

Nobel Prize in Physics (1993)

Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1995)

Karl Schwarzschild Medal (1997)

Asteroid 81859 Joetaylor, discovered by LINEAR in 2000, was named on the occasion of his retirement as a professor at Princeton University in 2006. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 9 November 2006 (M.P.C. 57952).

Taylor was among the first group of MacArthur Fellows.……