Person

Bracewell, Ronald Newbold (1921 - 2007)

AO

Born
22 July 1921
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died
12 August 2007
Stanford, California, U.S.A.
Occupation
Electrical engineer and Radio astronomer

Summary

Ronald Bracewell worked in the CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory during World War II and 1949-1954. He then moved to the United States of America, where he joined the Electrical Engineering faculty of Stanford University in 1955. Starting with his co-authorship with J. L. Pawsey of the first text on "Radio Astronomy" in 1955, Ron spent much of his time either contributing chapters to books or writing books, a number of which have been translated into other languages.His publications include The fourier Transform and its Applications (1965, 2nd ed. 1978).

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Details

Born Sydney, 1921. Educated Universities of Sydney (BSc 1941, BE 1943, ME 1948) and Cambridge (PhD 1949). Designed and developed microwave radar equipment, CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory during World War II, Senior Research Officer 1949-54, lecturer in radio astronomy, Berkeley Astronomy Department, University of California 1954-55, Electrical Engineering Faculty, Stanford University from 1955, Lewis M. Terman Professor and Fellow in Electrical Engineering from 1974. Duddell Premium, Institution of Electrical Engineers, London 1952.

Chronology

1978
Award - Pollock Memorial Lecture, Royal Society of New South Wales
1994
Award - Heinrich Hertz Medal, IEEE - for his tomography work
8 Jun 1998
Award - Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) - for service to science in the fields of radio astronomy and image reconstruction

Published resources

Books

  • Frater, Robert H.; Goss, Miller; and Wendt, Harry, Four pillars of radio astronomy: Mills, Christiansen, Wild and Bracewell (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 199 pp. Details
  • Pawsey, J. L.; Bracewell, R. N., Radio astronomy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 361 pp. Details
  • The Radiophysics Laboratory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, A Textbook of Radar (Sydney; London: Angus & Robertson, 1947), 579 pp. Author of Chapter 6. Details

Book Sections

  • Bracewell, R. N., 'Early work on imaging theory in radio astronomy' in The early years of radio astronomy: reflections fifty years after Jansky's discovery, Sullivan, W. T., ed. (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 167-90. Details

Journal Articles

  • Bracewell, Ronald N. and Bhathal. Ragbir, 'Professor Ronald Bracewell interviewed by Ragbir Bhathal', Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 151 (2) (2018), 181-208, https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/informit.184695715927865. Details
  • Thompson, A. Richard and Frater, Robert H., 'Ronald N. Bracewell: an Appreciation.', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 13 (2010), 172-8. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

See also

  • Goss, W. M.; Hooker, Claire; and Ekers, Ronald D., Joe Pawsey and the founding of Australian radio astronomy: early discoveries, from the sun to the cosmos (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2023), 1815 pp. Details

Gavan McCarthy; Ken McInnes

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 28 October 2025

EOAS ID: biogs/P000251b.htm

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