Russell Hulse
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031361
Happy birthday to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Russell Hulse! He was born in New York City in 1950. For his PhD he worked with Joseph Taylor on large-scale survey of pulsars, “dead” stars that emit pulses of radiation. Hulse did postdoctoral work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, and later went to Princeton University. In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered binary pulsar PSR B1913+16, which is made up of a pulsar and another stellar corpse called a neutron star. Hulse, Taylor, and other colleagues used the pulsar system to make high-precision tests of general relativity, including demonstrating the existence of gravitational waves. Hulse and Taylor shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Date in History: 28 November 1950
