Father of radio astronomy Credit: NRAO/AUI

On 5 May 1933, The New York Times carried a front-page article reporting Karl Jansky's discovery of radio noise emanating from the centre of the Galaxy. Jansky had been investigating the source of interference in the short-wave radio links that were then used for transatlantic telecommunications. But although his discovery received considerable popular attention, it made no impact on mainstream astronomy. As Grote Reber commented, “The astronomers of the time didn't know anything about radio or electronics, and the radio engineers didn't know anything about astronomy”.

Reber was then a 22-year-old engineering graduate of the Armour Institute of Technology in Illinois with a specialty in electronics and communications. He had built and operated his own amateur radio station, W9GFZ, and was looking for new challenges when he heard Jansky's 'star noise' as it was rebroadcast by NBC radio. Reber tried to contact professional astronomers about it, but they showed little interest. “So,” he later related, “I consulted with myself and decided to build a dish.”

With $2,000 of his own money — about equivalent to his annual salary, but which he claimed he managed to afford by using public transport instead of buying a car — he built a 32-foot antenna in his mother's backyard. He took astronomy courses at the University of Chicago, and using his experience and skills as an electrical engineer and radio amateur he designed, built and tested a series of sensitive radio receivers. After many failures, in the spring of 1939 Reber finally succeeded in detecting Jansky's galactic radio noise.

Automobile-ignition noise interfered with Reber's observations, so he observed at night, laboriously writing down the readings from his detector every minute. By day, he returned to his job in Chicago, catching a few hours' sleep each evening before returning to his night's observations. At weekends, he analysed his data, and eventually produced the first high-resolution radio map of the sky. He also discovered the surprisingly intense radio-noise storms from the Sun.

At first, his work was received with scepticism by the astronomy community, and he had great difficulty getting his papers accepted for publication in the astronomical literature. According to Reber, the professionals thought “the whole affair was at best a mistake and at worst, a hoax”.

But Reber's radio map provided the incentive for the dramatic growth in radio astronomy that occurred after the end of the Second World War. Former radar scientists and astronomers, primarily in the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands, built a series of ever more powerful radio telescopes. With them, they made remarkable discoveries that have changed our fundamental understanding of the Universe. The enormously energetic clouds of relativistic electrons and cosmic jets that extend up to millions of light years into space, as well as quasars, pulsars, gravitational lensing, cosmic microwave masers, extrasolar planetary systems, complex interstellar molecules, and the cosmic microwave background radiation were all discovered by radio telescopes. Radio telescopes have also been used to measure the relativistic bending of electromagnetic waves that pass near the Sun, and to demonstrate the existence of gravitational radiation and measure continental drift.

Since Reber's early work, radio astronomers have steadily moved to ever shorter wavelengths in the quest for better angular resolution and for the multitude of molecular transitions that exist in the millimetre and submillimetre wavebands. Reber, however, as usual departing from conventional 'wisdom', concentrated in his later research on extremely long wavelengths. Working with Bill Ellis in Tasmania, where the ionospheric attenuation of radio waves is at a minimum, Reber designed and built a number of antennas to study galactic radio emission at wavelengths of a few hundred metres, as well as building an energy-efficient home in Bothwell, where he lived for many years.

Except for a brief period between 1948 and 1951 when he was at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, Reber worked as an amateur whose research was directed only by his curiosity and imagination. He paid no attention to establishment science — except to express his disregard. “There were no self-appointed pontiffs looking over my shoulder giving bad advice,” he explained. “The kinds of things I want to do are the kind establishment men will not have any part of.”

In addition to his pioneering work in radio astronomy, Reber also published research in a variety of fields ranging from radio circuitry and ionospheric physics to the growth of beans and the carbon dating of aboriginal campfire sites. Throughout his career, he was unable to secure funding from any of the conventional sources, such as the US National Science Foundation or the Department of Defense. Instead, he relied on modest support from the New York-based Research Corporation, as well as his own personal funds.

Grote Reber was the world's first radio astronomer. His 32-foot backyard telescope was the forerunner of the large steerable radio telescopes of today, as well as the smaller satellite-television dishes found in so many homes. Although Karl Jansky was the first to detect cosmic radio emission, it was Reber who, through his innovative experiments, forceful personality and stubborn persistence, finally convinced astronomers that it might be important and opened a new window on the Universe.

Until a few months before his death on 20 December 2002, two days before his 91st birthday, Reber continued to be active on a variety of scientific, political and social issues. He argued, with equal enthusiasm, against the Big Bang Universe and the increasing use of fossil fuels, and took a public stand against 'big science'. He was described by some as a genius, by others as a crackpot; but he was ultimately recognized by the astronomy community with the award of most of its major prizes.