Grote Reber, 90; Helped Pioneer Radio Astronomy in Backyard

Grote Reber, 90, a pioneer of radio astronomy who built an antenna dish in his Wheaton, Ill., backyard in the 1930s and tuned it to radio signals from space, died Dec. 20 of unspecified causes.

He died in Tasmania, Australia, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M.

Reber was the first person to build a radio telescope dedicated to astronomy, opening a window on the universe that eventually produced such landmark discoveries as quasars, pulsars and the remnant afterglow of the Big Bang. His self-financed experiments laid the foundation for today’s advanced radio-astronomy facilities.

A young engineering graduate and radio engineer, Reber decided to follow up Karl Jansky’s 1933 announcement of the discovery of radio waves from space.

In his spare time in 1937, Rever built a 9-meter dish antenna in his backyard. Two years later, he managed to pick up some signals. In 1941, he produced the first radio map of the sky based on a series of systematic observations.

Reber’s original dish antenna is on display at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s site in Green Bank, W.Va., where he worked in the late 1950s. He later moved to Tasmaniam which is considered an ideal place to study cosmic radio waves at very low frequencies.