[31.02] Is a ``radio telescope" a telescope?: The integration of early radio astronomy into astronomy

AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 31. HAD II: The Development of American Astrophysics: Ideas, Instruments, Observatories and Astronomers
Special Session Oral, Monday, January 7, 2002, 10:30-12:00noon, State

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[31.02] Is a ``radio telescope" a telescope?: The integration of early radio astronomy into astronomy

W.T. Sullivan (Univ. Washington)

In the first 5-10 years after World War II the technique that came to be called ``radio astronomy," mostly conducted by radio physicists and engineers (who came to be called ``radio astronomers") had a problematic relationship with the existing astronomy community (who eventually came to be called ``optical astronomers"). This talk will examine how this relationship evolved over the postwar decade, and how it varied in the leading nations. By the mid-1950s it was clear that radio astronomy would not be a separate discipline, but rather a new technique within the discipline of astronomy.

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