Rod Davies facts for kids
Rodney Deane Davies, known as Rod Davies, was a famous professor who studied space using radio waves. He was born in Australia in 1930 and became a top scientist in England. He led the Jodrell Bank Observatory, a big place with giant radio telescopes. Rod Davies was best known for his important work on the "Cosmic microwave background" and the "21cm line," which helped us understand the early universe and how galaxies are made.
Quick facts for kids
Rod Davies
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Rod Davies in 2007
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| Born | 8 January 1930 |
| Died | 8 November 2015 (aged 85) |
| Occupation | Astronomer |
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About Rod Davies
Rod Davies was born on January 8, 1930, in a small farming village called Balaklava in South Australia. His parents were Holbin and Rena Davies. He had three brothers.
He met his wife, Beth, while they were students at the University of Adelaide. They got married in 1953. Later that same year, they moved to Cheshire, United Kingdom. They had four children: Rosalyn, Claire, Stewart, and Warwick. They also had eleven grandchildren.
Rod was very interested in trees and knew a lot about them. He also became a preacher at his church when he was 16 years old. He continued to attend his church regularly in Manchester.
Rod worked hard even when he was unwell. His health became worse in the last two months of his life. He passed away on November 8, 2015.
Education and Career
Rod Davies went to Adelaide High School. In 1946, he won a scholarship to study Physics at the University of Adelaide. He earned a special degree in 1951. After that, he worked as a researcher in Sydney, Australia. He studied radio bursts coming from the Sun.
When he was 23, he wrote a letter to Bernard Lovell. Lovell was a friend of Rod's boss, Joe Pawsey. Rod asked for a job at Jodrell Bank Observatory. He was then hired as a lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1953.
In 1956, he earned his PhD degree. His research was about measuring how far away galaxies are using the "21cm line" of hydrogen. From 1988 to 1997, he was the Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory.
He was also the President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1987 to 1989. In 1992, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very important honor for scientists. He received another award, the CBE, in 1995. He officially retired in 1997. However, he kept working actively at Jodrell Bank until he passed away.
Research and Discoveries
During his career, Rod Davies wrote more than 500 scientific papers. His research mainly focused on the "large-scale structure of the Universe." This means he studied how galaxies and groups of galaxies are arranged in huge patterns across space.
He studied the light given off by hydrogen in galaxies. This helped scientists understand how galaxies move away from each other, a process called "Hubble flow." He also used special telescopes called interferometers to observe signals from molecules called OH.
Rod Davies was most famous for his work on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is like a faint glow of heat left over from the very early universe. He started his observations in the late 1970s at Jodrell Bank. He then moved his telescopes to a mountain in Tenerife in the early 1980s. This was because the air there was clearer, which helped him get better measurements.
By the early 1990s, his instruments had found tiny differences in the CMB. These differences are called "anisotropies." They are like small bumps and dips in the early universe's glow. These tiny differences eventually grew into the galaxies and stars we see today. Although his team found these results, another team, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) team, announced their discovery first. The COBE team later won the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work.
Rod Davies also led research on how the Milky Way galaxy affects CMB measurements. He worked on the Planck satellite project. This satellite also studied the CMB and helped us learn more about our own galaxy and the solar system.
He continued his research for 18 years after he retired. His very last scientific paper was published a few months after he died.
