Taylor, Joseph H (1941– )

US radio astronomer who, with Russell Hulse, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1993 for their discovery of a new type of pulsar, a binary pulsar. The pulsar has an invisible companion orbiting around it and radiates gravitational waves. This was the first experimental confirmation of the reality of waves predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Taylor and Hulse discovered the pulsar in 1974, when Taylor was working at the Unversity of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, and Hulse was a postgraduate student. The two astronomers detected a small regular change in the intervals between the radio pulses emitted by a pulsar called PSR1913+16. This occurred because the pulsar was orbiting another body. The pulses were slowing down in a regular way, losing about 75 microseconds a year due to energy being lost as gravitational waves were emitted. Over the next 18 years, Taylor refined his observations of the binary system's pulses and was able to confirm that the pulses were slowing down at the rate predicted by general relativity.

Taylor is now professor of physics at Princeton University, New Jersey.