Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.

Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. (born March 29, 1941) is an American astrophysicist and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with his former student Russell Alan Hulse, "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."

Early years

Taylor was born in Philadelphia to Joseph Hooton Taylor, Sr., and Sylvia Evans Taylor, both of whom had Quaker roots for many generations. He was educated at Haverford College (B.A. Physics 1963) and Harvard University (Ph.D. Astronomy 1968). After a brief research position at Harvard, Taylor went to the University of Massachusetts, eventually becoming Professor of Astronomy and Associate Director of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Taylor's thesis work was on lunar occultation measurements. About the time he completed his Ph.D., Jocelyn Bell discovered the first radio pulsars with a telescope near Cambridge, England.

Middle years

Taylor immediately went to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's telescopes in Green Bank, West Virginia, and participated in the discovery of the first pulsars discovered outside Cambridge. Since then, he has worked on all aspects of pulsar astrophysics. In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered the first pulsar in a binary system, named PSR B1913+16 after its position in the sky, during a survey for pulsars at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Although it was not understood at the time, this was also the first of what are now called recycled pulsars: neutron stars that have been spun-up to fast spin rates by the transfer of mass onto their surfaces from a companion star.

The orbit of this binary system is slowly shrinking as it loses energy because of emission of gravitational radiation. The predicted rate of shrinkage can be precisely predicted from Einstein's theory, and over a thirty-year period Taylor and his colleagues have made measurements that match this prediction to much better than 1% accuracy. There are now scores of binary pulsars known, and independent measurements have now confirmed Taylor's results.

Later years

In 1980, he moved to Princeton University, where he was the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Physics, having also served for six years as Dean of Faculty. He retired in 2006.

Nobel

Taylor has used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity. Working with his colleague Joel Weisberg, Taylor has used observations of this pulsar to demonstrated the existence of gravitational radiation in the amount and with the properties first predicted by Albert Einstein. He and Hulse shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of this object.

Other awards

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Taylor has been recognized with many other awards, including the first Heineman Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the Tomalla Foundation Prize, the Magellanic Premium, the Carty Award for the Advancement of Science, the Albert Einstein Medal, the Wolf Prize in Physics, and the Karl Schwarzschild Medal. He was among the first group of MacArthur Fellows. He has served on many boards, committees, and panels, co-chairing the Decadal Panel of that produced the report Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium that established the United States's national priorities in astronomy and astrophysics for the period 2000-2010.

Amateur Radio

Taylor is also well known in the field of weak signal communication in amateur radio. He wrote WSJT, a program which uses soundcard generated signals to communicate over links which would not sustain normal communications, such as moonbounce and meteor scatter. His amateur callsign is K1JT.

Notable Siblings

Joseph's older brother Harold E. Taylor, Haverford College, MIT, and University of Iowa alumnus, was a Professor of Physics at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey for over 30 years. As one of the original faculty members, Hal did research and instructed in the subjects of Astrophysics, Meteorology, Astronomy, Electronics, and general Physics. One of the research projects Hal instrumented was a large groundwater source heat-pump system to heat and cool the entire academic complex at Stockton. This geothermal well-based system saves the institution around $500,000 per year in electricity for heating and cooling. Hal also chaired the local Amnesty International Chapter in Atlantic County, NJ. Hal passed away in December 2000. The college has since renamed the campus observatory, which he helped facilitate in 1974, in his honor. There is also a school scholarship in his name, the Hal Taylor "Cackleberry" Award.

During their youth, Joseph and Hal were obvious enthusiasts of ham radio. Together they erected numerous large, rotating, ham-radio antennas, high above the roof of their family's three-story Victorian farmhouse. Their rigs were mostly built from a mixture of post-war surplus equipment and junk television sets. Later in life, Hal moved back to the family farm following the death of their father to carry on the tradition and help run the farm. He was known to be interviewed by local news stations during times of extreme weather, such as droughts.

Hal was one of Haverford College's greatest and most admired athletes ever. As a right fullback in soccer he was selected to the first All-American team in an era when there was only one such eleven, covering all colleges in the country.

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