William E. Gordon

William E. Gordon ( born January 8, 1918 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA, † February 16, 2010 in Ithaca, New York, USA ) was an American electrical engineer, physicist and astronomer.

Life

After school he studied at the Teacher 's College, Montclair (New Jersey) and ended it with a bachelor's degree. He then studied at New York University, where he graduated with a Master of Science ( M.Sc.). Later, his promotion came to the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University.

Gordon worked in the late 1950s to a radar system for the study of the ionosphere of the earth as he discovered that his developments could also be incorporated for studies in the new field of radio astronomy.

Funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA ) in 1960, he developed a telescope with a 1000 feet ( about 305 meters) large fixed spherical reflector and a reflector installed on the movable focusing system. The construction of the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo (Puerto Rico) in 1963 completed. This radio telescope was fundamental for several discoveries such as the determination of the rotation period of Mercury, the study of pulsars ( rapidly rotating neutron stars ) and the discovery of the first binary pulsar PSR 1913 16 by Russell Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. 1974.

After completing his work at the Arecibo Observatory in 1966, he received a teaching position at Rice University in Houston (Texas ). Gordon, whose retirement in 1985, was since 1968 a member of the National Academy of Sciences and, since 1975, the National Academy of Engineering. After 1986 he was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Built by him Arecibo Observatory had also seen an important role in the public idea about the appearance of science and was both in the James Bond film Goldeneye (1995 ) as well as in the movie Contact ( 1997) with Jodie Foster.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Arecibo Observatory, the National Science Foundation ( ) is operated by Cornell University by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center - ( National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center ) for the National Science Foundation, said Gordon 2003: