History of Astronomy in Australia: Big-Impact Astronomy from World War II until the Lunar Landing (1945-1969)

Abstract

Radio astronomy commenced in earnest after World War II, with Australia keenly engaged through the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. At this juncture, Australia's Commonwealth Solar Observatory expanded its portfolio from primarily studying solar phenomena to conducting stellar and extragalactic research. Subsequently, in the 1950s and 1960s, astronomy gradually became taught and researched in Australian universities. However, most scientific publications from this era of growth and discovery have no country of affiliation in their header information, making it hard to find the Australian astronomy articles from this period. In 2014, we used the then-new Astrophysics Data System (ADS) tool Bumblebee to overcome this challenge and track down the Australian-led astronomy papers published during the quarter of a century after World War II, from 1945 until the lunar landing in 1969. This required knowledge of the research centres and facilities operating at the time, which are briefly summarised herein. Based on citation counts -- an objective, universally-used measure of scientific impact -- we report on the Australian astronomy articles which had the biggest impact. We have identified the top-ten most-cited papers, and thus also their area of research, from five consecutive time-intervals across that blossoming quarter-century of astronomy. Moreover, we have invested a substantial amount of time researching and providing a small tribute to each of the 62 scientists involved, including several trail-blazing women. Furthermore, we provide an extensive list of references and point out many interesting historical connections and anecdotes.

To appear in "A Trip across the Universe: Our Present Knowledge and Future Perspectives", Emilio Elizalde (Ed.), Galaxies, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

References in corpus (9)

• The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) Project
• Science With The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• Follow up of GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterpart by Australian-led observing programs
• The UTMOST: A hybrid digital signal processor transforms the MOST
• Gridded and direct Epoch of Reionisation bispectrum estimates using the Murchison Widefield Array
• Early Australian Optical and Radio Observations of Centaurus A
• ASKAP Commissioning Observations of the GAMA 23 Field
• An optimised gravitational wave follow-up strategy with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• Nuclear Astrophysics Before 1957