Ronald Drever
Ronald William Prest Drever (26 October 1931 – 7 March 2017) was a Scottish experimental physicist. He was a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, co-founded the LIGO project, and was a co-inventor of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique for laser stabilisation, as well as the Hughes–Drever experiment. This work was instrumental in the first detection of gravitational waves in September 2015.
Ron Drever | |
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Drever in Glasgow 2007 | |
| Born | Ronald William Prest Drever 26 October 1931 Bishopton, Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK |
| Died | 7 March 2017 (aged 85) Edinburgh, Scotland, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | University of Glasgow (PhD) |
| Known for | Laser stabilizing technique Pioneering laser interferometric gravitational wave observation. |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Laser physics, Experimental Gravitation |
| Institutions | California Institute of Technology, University of Glasgow |
| Thesis | Studies of orbital electron capture using proportional counters (1959) |
| Doctoral students | James Hough |
| Website | www |
Drever died on 7 March 2017, aged 85, seven months before his colleagues Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on the observation of gravitational waves. The trio of Drever, Thorne and Weiss shared several major physics prizes in 2016, so it is widely believed that Drever would have won the Nobel Prize in the place of Barry Barish had he not died before the Nobel Committee made their decision.