Book Review: The First Woman Radio Astronomer, under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy, Ruby Payne-Scott

Abstract

Book Reviews more generally throughout the volume, it would have been extremely useful had she at least brought the relevant bibliography up to date. A survey of this sort from 1987 is only valuable in 2013 up to a certain point; but to translate and re-publish without bringing either the analysis or the bibliography up to date seems a wasted opportunity. Closer proofreading by a native English speaker on several essays would also have been appreciated. University of Nevada, Reno H. D arrel R utkin THE FIRST WOMAN RADIO ASTRONOMER Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy, Ruby Payne-Scott. W. M. Goss and Richard X. McGee (Springer, Berlin, 2010). Pp. xxii + 354. €128. ISBN She loved bush walking, cats, and radio engineering; was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Australia; and discovered or co-discovered at least three of the four kinds of radio burst emission from the Sun. She was Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–81), the first woman radio astronomer in Australia and, very probably, in the world. Despite this, she is almost forgotten in the astronomical community, even its radio part. Reading this book raised for me several questions. First, why did Payne-Scott not leave a more visible footprint? The authors men- tion several contributing factors: her gender and lack of Ph.D. in a community where academic credentials were becoming common as radar work gave way to astronomy; several more prominent colleagues who were not very fond of her (although John Bolton later spoke highly of her work); and her definitive departure from the radio astronomy community in 1951, about four months before the birth of her first child. She never returned, taking up high school teaching when her children were 10 and 12. This meant that she was not around later to cite her own early papers! Less clear from the book is that rapid advances in radio telescopes, detectors, and data- processing soon swamped her contributions, which included early development of interferometry and aperture synthesis and the recognition that confusion was a more serious problem than low sensitivity for the radio telescopes of the time, as well as the discovery of and attempts to characterize the various types of solar radio bursts. Second, do we need to know more about Payne-Scott, her life and her work? The authors clearly think so, since they have worked long and hard to track down primary sources in Australian archives and to interview many people (often just in the nick of time) who knew her. The oddest omission, I think, is Frank J. Kerr (1918–2000) who appears on at least 17 pages and in several photographs of Payne-Scott but who was not interviewed and does not even make the index. Kerr was an active member of the Australian radar and radio astronomy communities, almost from the begin- ning, and later a co-founder of the University of Maryland radio astronomy group, where I knew him. Downloaded from jha.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on May 6, 2015