Hewish, Antony (1924– )

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.

Hewish was born in Cornwall and educated at King's College, Taunton, and studied at Cambridge. After graduation he worked in Ryle's research team at the Cavendish Laboratory there. He became a professor at Cambridge in 1971.

Hewish has patented a system of space navigation using three pulsars as reference points, which would provide coordinates in outer space accurate up to a few hundred kilometres.