Ryle, Martin

English radio astronomer. At the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cambridge, he developed the technique of sky-mapping using ‘aperture synthesis’, combining smaller dish aerials to give the characteristics of one large one. His work on the distribution of radio sources in the universe brought confirmation of the Big Bang theory. He was awarded with his co-worker, the English radio astronomer Antony Hewish, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for his work on the development of radio astronomy, particularly the aperture-synthesis technique, and the discovery of pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit pulses of energy. He was knighted in 1966.