Citizenship Australia Name Ronald Ekers Nationality Australian Role Astronomer | Institutions ATNF
VLA Residence Australia Fields Astrophysics | |
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Born 18 September 1941 (age 82)
Victor Harbor ( 1941-09-18 ) Alma mater Australian National University Notable awards Fellow of the Royal Society (2005)
Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, 1993
Centenary Medal (Australia), 2003
Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture (Australian Academy of Science), 2005 Education Australian National University, University of Adelaide | ||
Notable students Christophe Kotanyi | ||
Ronald (Ron) David Ekers (born 18 September 1941) FRS FAA is an Australian radio astronomer. His fields of specialty include the study of active galactic nuclei, cosmology, and radio astronomy techniques.
Ron Ekers was born in Victor Harbor, South Australia. He showed interest in astronomy at a young age.
Ron Ekers graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1963 and received his PhD in astronomy at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1967. His postdoctoral supervisor at ANU was the astronomer John Gatenby Bolton. After graduating from ANU, his first postdoctoral studies were performed at Caltech, during which time Richard P. Feynman and Fred Hoyle were active. When Ron was in his teenage years, he bought a telescope and recorded the position of stars.
He was director of the Very Large Array (VLA) from 1980 until 1987. From 1988 to 2003 he was Foundation Director of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility. He is a past President of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and a member of the Advisory Board for the Peter Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize.
Honours and awards
He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a Foreign Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in 1993, a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2003 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005.