‘Towering figure’ in radio astronomy dies at 102 | Manchester News

Tributes have been paid to a “towering figure in British astronomy” who has died aged 102.

Sir Francis Graham-Smith was believed to be the world’s oldest active radio astronomer, according to Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire.

Known to his friends as Graham, he served as the observatory’s second director and was the Astronomer Royal – a title bestowed upon the UK’s most eminent astronomer – between 1982 and 1990.

In a tribute shared on social media, Jodrell Bank said Sir Francis had an article published only a few months ago in the Royal Astronomical Society’s magazine, Astronomy & Geophysics.

Andrew Lyne, emeritus professor of radio astronomy at The University of Manchester, said: “Sir Francis was a towering figure in British astronomy, whose career spanned much of the history of radio astronomy itself, and as a teacher and mentor he enhanced the lives of many scientists, myself included.”

Sir Francis was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society and was a former President of the Royal Astronomical Society before being knighted in 1986.

He made “foundational contributions to the understanding of the interstellar medium, pulsars, and the development of radio telescopes”, Jodrell Bank said.

The University of Manchester said Sir Francis interrupted his university studies in Cambridge during World War Two to work on the development of radar.

At the end of the war, he returned to Cambridge and began working alongside Martin Ryle, another wartime radar expert.

Sir Francis played a key role in pioneering the new science of radio astronomy, providing some of the most accurate positions for the newly discovered sources of cosmic radio waves using devices called interferometers.

In 1964, he was appointed as a professor of radio astronomy at the University of Manchester and moved to Jodrell Bank.

In 1982 he succeeded Sir Bernard Lovell, who founded Jodrell Bank, as its director.

The observatory said Sir Francis’s leadership had ensured its “continued international scientific excellence”.

“His contribution to the field was immeasurable,” it added.

Sir Francis technically retired in 1988 but continued to be an “active member” of Jodrell Bank’s pulsar research group until very recently.

The University of Manchester said Sir Francis and Elizabeth, his wife of 76 years who died in 2021, had four children.

Away from astronomy, he was a keen gardener and an “avid” bee-keeper, a hobby which he enjoyed well into his 90s.