[South Florida DX Association] Bill Gordon SK at 92 years Arecibo Observatory Designer

[DNovoa]

Subject:  Bill Gordon SK at 92 years Arecibo Observatory Designer
 
  
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<http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/radio-telescope-Cornell-University/photo/
100218/481/45434860074349598f178c1921bcfccb/s:/ap/20100218/ap_on_sc/us_o
bit_bill_gordon;_ylt=AkpkrNZlP5vQGBr0A3hq_g1xieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTE5bjMxNmFwB
HBvcwMxBHNlYwN5bl9yX3RvcF9waG90bwRzbGsDZmlsZS10aGlzbWF5> FILE - This May
31, 2007 file photo shows the world's largest radio telescope --AP -
FILE - This May 31, 2007 file photo shows the world's largest radio
telescope -- the Arecibo Observatory . 
By MARY ESCH, Associated Press Writer Mary Esch, Associated Press Writer
- Thu Feb 18, 5:53 pm ET
ALBANY, N.Y. - Astronomer and engineer Bill Gordon, who designed the
photogenic radio telescope in Puerto Rico that spotted the first planets
beyond our solar system and lakes on one of Saturn's moons, has died in
New York state. He was 92.
Gordon died Tuesday of natural causes, according to officials at Cornell
University in Ithaca, the Ivy League college where he served on the
engineering faculty from 1953-66.
He designed the Arecibo Observatory's radio telescope in the 1950s; it's
a 1,000-foot-wide dish set in a sinkhole surrounded by forested hills.
Within a year of opening, it was used to determine the planet Mercury's
period of rotation. After radio pulsars - rotating neutron stars - were
discovered in 1967, the observatory played a prominent role in studying
their properties.
The astronomers Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered the first
binary pulsar at Arecibo in 1974, leading to a 1993 Nobel Prize in
physics.
In 1990, Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan used the telescope in
the discovery of a pulsar in the constellation Virgo that was shown to
be orbited by the first known planets beyond Earth's solar system.
The telescope, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by
Cornell, had a prominent role in the 1997 Jodie Foster film "Contact,"
based on a Carl Sagan book about the search for extraterrestrial life -
a hunt that still continues at the observatory. In the 1995 James Bond
movie "GoldenEye," the telescope's platform figured in the climactic
fight scene.
"When we were talking about building (the telescope) back in the late
'50s, we were told by eminent authorities it couldn't be done," Gordon
said at Arecibo's 40th Anniversary in 2003. "We were in the position of
trying to do something that was impossible, and it took a lot of guts
and we were young enough that we didn't know we couldn't do it."
These days, the telescope's work includes searching for asteroids and
comets headed for Earth. It also discovered lakes of hydrocarbons on
Saturn's moon Titan.
Gordon was born in Paterson, N.J., and earned a bachelor's degree from
Montclair State Teacher's College, a master's degree from New York
University and his doctorate at Cornell. He was a professor and
administrator at Rice University in Texas from 1966 until his retirement
in 1985.