Hewish, Antony

English radio astronomer who, with Martin Ryle, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for his work on the development of radioastronomy, particularly the aperture-synthesis technique, and the discovery of pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit pulses of energy.

The discovery by Jocelyn Bell Burnell of a regularly fluctuating signal, which turned out to be the first pulsar, began a period of intensive research. Hewish discovered another three straight away, and more than 170 pulsars have been found since 1967.