Radio Astronomer John Bolton and a New Window on the Universe

The leading Australian astronomer of his generation, John Bolton (1922–93), was born in Sheffield and educated at Cambridge University. After wartime service in the Royal Navy, he arrived in Sydney and joined the CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory. In the late 1940s he discovered and identified the first discrete radio sources, unusual objects at vast distances with intense emission at radio frequencies. These discoveries marked the birth of a new field – extragalactic radio astronomy.

Peter Robertson spent most of his career with the CSIRO Publishing group in Melbourne, where he was editor of the national research journal for physics. He has written widely on Australian science, including a book on the history of the Parkes radio telescope, Beyond Southern Skies.