Cosmic Noise

Woodruff T. Sullivan III is Professor of Astronomy and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle. Trained as a radio astronomer, his research has included radio studies of the interstellar medium in our own and other galaxies, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and astrobiology.

• 1. Prologue; 2. Searching for solar hertzian waves; 3. Jansky and his star static; 4. Grote Reber: science in your backyard; 5. Wartime discovery of the radio sun; 6. Hey's army group after the war; 7.Radiophysics laboratory, Sydney; 8. Ryle's group at the Cavendish; 9. Lovell at Jodrell Bank; 10. Other radio astronomy groups before 1952; 11. Meteor radar; 12. Reaching for the moon; 13. The radio sun; 14. Radio stars; 15. Theories of galactic noise; 16. The 21-cm hydrogen line; 17. New astronomers; 18. A new astronomy; Appendixes; References; Index.

'Sullivan's work is a product of 25 years in the history of science and only slightly longer in the realm of professional radio astronomers … [Encompasses] essentially all major characters and incidents of early radio astronomy … Cosmic Noise covers the multiple strands that amorphously connect the late nineteenth-century discovery of radio waves to 1952/53 radio astronomy … a commendable job of assembling people, their memories, their publications, their instruments, and their institutions to give a solid overview of the early history of a diverse field.' Metascience