Ronald Drever

Ron Drever
Drever in Glasgow 2007
Born
Ronald William Prest Drever

26 October 1931[1]
Bishopton, Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK
Died7 March 2017(2017-03-07) (aged 85)[1]
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Alma materUniversity of Glasgow (PhD)
Known forLaser stabilizing technique
Pioneering laser interferometric gravitational wave observation.
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, Laser physics, Experimental Gravitation
InstitutionsCalifornia Institute of Technology, University of Glasgow
ThesisStudies of orbital electron capture using proportional counters (1959)
Doctoral studentsJames Hough
Websitewww.pma.caltech.edu/content/ronald-w-drever

Ronald William Prest Drever (26 October 1931 – 7 March 2017) was a Scottish experimental physicist. He was a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, co-founded the LIGO project, and was a co-inventor of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique for laser stabilisation, as well as the Hughes–Drever experiment. This work was instrumental in the first detection of gravitational waves in September 2015.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Drever died on 7 March 2017, aged 85,[8] seven months before his colleagues Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on the observation of gravitational waves.[9] The trio of Drever, Thorne and Weiss shared several major physics prizes in 2016, so it is widely believed that Drever would have won the Nobel Prize in the place of Barry Barish had he not died before the Nobel Committee made their decision.[10][11]

  1. ^ a b "Caltech Mourns the Passing of LIGO Co-founder Ronald W. P. Drever". Whitney Clavin. Caltech. 8 March 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
  2. ^ Knapton, Sarah (12 February 2016). "British scientist who played key role in gravitational waves research is suffering from dementia". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
  3. ^ Twilley, Nicola. "Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2016-02-11.
  4. ^ Abbott, B.P.; et al. (2016). "Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger". Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 (6): 061102. arXiv:1602.03837. Bibcode:2016PhRvL.116f1102A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102. PMID 26918975. S2CID 124959784.
  5. ^ Naeye, Robert (11 February 2016). "Gravitational Wave Detection Heralds New Era of Science". Sky and Telescope. Retrieved 11 February 2016.
  6. ^ Castelvecchi, Davide; Witze, Alexandra (11 February 2016). "Einstein's gravitational waves found at last". Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19361. S2CID 182916902. Retrieved 11 February 2016.
  7. ^ Cho, Adrian (2016). "Will Nobel Prize overlook master builder of gravitational wave detectors?". Science. doi:10.1126/science.aah7350. ISSN 0036-8075.
  8. ^ "Gravitational waves pioneer Ronald Drever dies". Jonathan Amos. BBC. 8 March 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
  9. ^ "Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 press release". nobelprize.org.
  10. ^ "Ronald Drever". Physics Today. 2018-10-26. doi:10.1063/PT.6.6.20181026a. S2CID 239972691.
  11. ^ "Scottish scientist was tipped to join Nobel prize winners". www.scotsman.com. Retrieved 2019-11-26.