Q4 Biography: Grote Reber

     For my final biography, I am studying Grote Reber, a noted radio astronomer that lived during the 1900's. Grote Reber was born in Wheaton, Illinois on December 22, 1911 to a fairly normal family. When Reber entered college, he studied at the Illinois institute of technology and decided to take up electrical engineering. Reber graduated in 1933 with a degree in electrical engineering and immediately entered the field of radio applications. For years, Reber worked as an amateur radio operator with many small companies, which provided an outlet for Reber to enter the true field of radio science. At the peak of the Great Depression, Reber learned about  a scientist named Karl Jansky, and subsequently applied to Bell Labs, where Jansky worked. 

     Four years after Reber applied to Bell labs, Reber began a foray of his own into the world of radio astronomy. In 1937, Reber built his very own radio telescope in his backyard. His telescope was 9 meters in diameter and utilized large sheets of reflective metal. This first telescope he built operated at around 3300 MHz; not low enough to detect radio waves from space. On his second attempt, he reached 900 MHz which was still not low enough. It was not until Reber built a telescope that was able to reach 160 MHz that would allow him to see into space. When reber was able to confirm Jansky's previous discoveries, he got published in the Astrophysical Journal and was offered research positions, which he later declined. Due to his findings and creation of a radiofrequency sky map, he subsequently triggered a radio astronomy explosion.

     During the latter years of Reber's life, Reber dedicated his studies to finding perfect spots and methods for optimizing radio astronomy. With the support of the Research Corporation in New York, Reber moved to Hawaii to build a better telescope, however, the Earth's ionosphere foiled those plans. Due to this inability to observe space on a radio based level, Reber moved to Tasmania where the ionosphere permitted intermittent windows of time to observe space without any interference. In his final years, Reber worked on perfecting a perfectly thermally insulated house, but never quite finished it. In the end, Grote Reber died two days before his 91st birthday on December 20th, 2002 in Hobart Tasmania.