Location: Visitors Centre Garden, Parkes Observatory, 585 Telescope Road, Parkes, NSW, 2870
Country: Wiradjuri
LGA: Parkes Shire Council
Region: Central Western NSW
Website: https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/science/display/115121-grote-reber
Map: Below
Grote Reber (1911–2002), ‘founding father’ of radio astronomy. An American rebel, frequently at odds with the scientific world, he was a magnificent inventor and engineer. After Chicago’s astronomy department refused to work further on Karl Jansky’s 1933 discovery of radio waves from space, Reber built his own parabolic dish from wood and chicken wire, and mapped the radio emission from the Milky Way at 400 megahertz and 150 megahertz.
Reber arrived in Tasmania in 1954 to start experiments with the Ionospheric Prediction Service, to discover radio emission from the sky below 1 megahertz. Reber built a 2.1 megahertz radio antenna, one of the world’s largest, at Dennistoun, near Bothwell [Tasmania] to study the Milky Way in the solar-minimum of 1961–63. He produced a map of the distribution of absorbing hydrogen in the galaxy.
Raymond Haynes, Grote Reber, The Companion to Tasmanian History, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies >>
Captions
Above images: Grote Reber Memorial, Visitors Centre Garden, Parkes Observatory. Photo by Merrill Findlay, 15 April 2025.
Grote Reber Museum, University of Tasmania >>
Mount Pleasant Radio Astronomy Observatory and Grote Reber Museum >>
Grote Reber, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies >>
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Post created 29 April 2025. Last updated 11 June 2025.
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