Abstract
In this short paper we pay tribute to our long-time colleague, mentor and good friend, Paul Wild (FAA, FRS, FTSE) and briefly review his major contributions to solar radio astronomy from 1941 when he joined the CSIRO’s Division of Radiophysics until 1971 when he became Chief of the Division. During this period he made important contributions to our understanding of solar physics with his development of the Penrith and Dapto radiospectrographs, the Dapto Swept-frequency Interferometer and the Culgoora Radioheliograph. These instruments revealed for the first time the presence of charged particles and shock waves travelling through the solar corona, and their potential effects on ‘space weather.’
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Notes
- 1.
All three authors have suitable credentials to pen this paper, spending time on the payroll of the Division of Radiophysics while Paul Wild was there. Bruce Slee joined the staff in 1946 and remained there until the Division was wound up and he transferred to the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF). He retired from the ATNF in 1988, long after Wild had left radio astronomy. While never a formal member of the Solar Group, he did use occultations of discrete radio sources to investigate the outer solar corona and adapted the Culgoora Radioheliograph so that it could be used for non-solar research of an evening (in the guise of the ‘Culgoora Circular Array’).
Ron Stewart joined Radiophysics and the Solar Group in 1963 and after transferring to the ATNF in 1986 remained there until 1996.
Wayne Orchiston joined Radiophysics in November 1961 and early in 1962 was appointed to the Solar Group, remaining there until February 1968 when he left to pursue full-time university studies.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to John Murray, Jim Roberts and Harry Wendt for providing information relevant to this study and to the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Division for providing images from the ATNF Historic Photographic Archive.
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Stewart, R., Orchiston, W., Slee, B. (2011). The Sun Has Set on a Brilliant Mind: John Paul Wild (1923–2008), Solar Radio Astronomer Extraordinaire. In: Orchiston, W., Nakamura, T., Strom, R. (eds) Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia-Pacific Region. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8161-5_19
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