Born in Oldland Common, Gloucestershire, in 1913, Bernard Lovell attended grammar school in Bristol.
He studied physics at the University of Bristol and was awarded his doctorate in 1936.
That same year, he joined the staff of the Department of Physics at the University of Manchester – although when it was first suggested that he should apply to Manchester, Lovell replied that Manchester was too dark and too humid. wet, and he would rather play. cricket in Bristol!
Cricket is one of his biggest hobbies and he is a very capable player, although he never gets enough time to play as much as he would like.
At the start of World War II, he was busy working on various projects, one of which was codenamed H2S – a radar-assisted ‘blind bombing’ system designed to help pilots find their target.

I suppose I was one of the first to try this (I was a navigator in the RAF Bomber Command at the time) and I have to admit that during the first few tests I was very nervous. skeptical about its potential.
However, Lovell soon realized that it was of immense value.
The same system can detect submarines moving below the surface, and it’s certainly true that Lovell’s work is equally useful in this regard.
This was the culmination of the German U-boat campaign, which inflicted heavy losses on British ships carrying vital cargo across the Atlantic.
Apparently, Hitler confessed that «the temporary failure of our U-boat operation was due to a unique technical invention by one of our enemy scientists».
If the Germans could have continued and increased their U-boat attacks, the outcome of the war might have been very different.
Listen to the universe

Lovell was involved in the study of cosmic rays but discovered that he was limited by the ‘noise’ of the radio, so he transferred himself and all his equipment to Jodrell Bank, a remote station.
His first great discovery was that ‘sporadic’ meteorites (those that are not present in any meteor shower) came from the Solar System and not from outer space as was commonly believed.
I vividly remember the time when Jodrell Bank was just a bank of grass and some of us were lying on our backs tracing meteors!
Lovell’s main work involved studying radio waves coming from outside the atmosphere.
This is a science just getting started, and because of Lovell’s work, the University of Manchester appointed him its first Professor of Radio Astronomy.
Lovell wanted to build a radio telescope much larger than anything he had tried before.

He got the university’s consent and was given a budget that seemed reasonable.
However, as the construction of the telescope gets underway, it becomes clear that the cost will be much greater than expected.
Lovell was not able to cut it significantly, and this was not well received by the university – at one stage Lovell was even threatened with jail!
Then a huge part of the luck. Sputnik 1, the first satellite, was launched by the Russians in 1957, and at the time, the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope was the only device outside the Soviet Union capable of tracking it.
Lovell simply didn’t know what to do with the financial crisis but at that stage [Morris Motors founder and philanthropist] Lord Nuffield stepped in and paid the amount owed – about £50,000, a fortune at the time.
The Jodrell Bank telescope was then the best and largest in the world, and it remains one of the top instruments.
There was a curious twist: according to Lovell, a Russian plot had planned to assassinate him because of his ability to trace the origin that no one else could.
Whether there really was such a conspiracy remains unclear to this day.

Radio Astronomy and Afterlife
Meanwhile, the Jodrell Bank telescope is doing pioneering work and has continued to do so for more than 50 years.
Lovell remained director of the observatory until his retirement in 1981, and the telescope was officially renamed the Lovell Telescope in 1987.
It was joined by a second telescope, the Mk II Radio Telescope, and this telescope is still in use.
Of course, today, radio astronomy is one of the main branches of astrophysics and it is right to say that we would not have progressed as much as we would have without Lovell’s work.
He is busy day and night. He finds it hard to have enough time for cricket, music and his family; however, he has written several books.

He became an OBE in 1946 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1955; In 1961, he was knighted, and he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1981.
He remained active until the end of his life. His family life is very happy and he has friends and colleagues all over the world.
Lovell is, to be sure, the ‘father of radio astronomy’.
If asked to pick the greatest scientist of modern times, many people, myself included, would vote for Bernard Lovell.
I first met him when I was in my teens and we still keep in regular contact. I am proud to have known him – there was no one like him, before or after.
This article appeared in the October 2012 issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine
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