Lovell, (Alfred Charles) Bernard (1913- )

English radio astronomer, director 1951-81 of Jodrell Bank Experimental Station (now Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories), Cheshire, England.

During World War II Lovell worked on developing a radar system to improve the aim of bombers in night raids. After the war he showed that radar could be a useful tool in astronomy, and lobbied for the setting-up of a radio-astronomy station. Jodrell Bank was built in Cheshire 1951-57. Several large radio telescopes were constructed, including a 76-m/250-ft instrument. Although its high cost was criticized, it proved a success after tracking the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957.

Lovell was born at Oldland Common, Gloucestershire, and studied at the University of Bristol, graduating in physics in 1933. His academic career was spent at the University of Manchester. He worked on cosmic rays 1936-39, on radar development during World War II, and as a lecturer in physics after the end of the war. In 1950, he discovered that galactic radio sources emitted at a constant wavelength and that the fluctuations (‘scintillation’) recorded on the Earth's surface were introduced only as the radio waves met and crossed the ionosphere (a layer of the Earth's outer atmosphere). He became the first professor of radio astronomy at the University of Manchester in 1951. He was made Fellow of the Royal Society in 1955, and was president of the Royal Astronomical Society 1969-71. He was knighted in 1961.

His books include Radio Astronomy (1951), The Individual and the Universe (1958), The Exploration of Space by Radio (1957; with R Hanbury Brown), The Exploration of Outer Space (1961), Discovering the Universe (1963), The Story of Jodrell Bank (1968), and Out of the Zenith (1973).