Thomas Gold

Born on 22 May 1920 in Vienna, Thomas Gold was an astrophysicist whose contributions included the discovery that pulsars are rotating neutron stars. Gold moved with his family to Berlin in 1930. Because his father was Jewish, the family left Berlin in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution, eventually settling in London. In 1939 Gold began studying mechanical engineering at Cambridge University. His studies were interrupted in 1940, when he was sent to an internment camp in Canada because of his Austrian citizenship. Upon his release a year later, he went to work on top-secret radar research for the British Admiralty, working alongside fellow cosmologists Fred Hoyle and Hermann Bondi. Gold earned his BA from Cambridge in 1942 and his MSc in 1946. However, Gold’s first published paper was in physiology, on the effect of resonance on the human ear in 1947. Also in 1947 Gold started working again with Bondi and Hoyle, this time on the steady-state theory, which posits that the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged because matter is continuously created. Although the Big Bang theory eventually won out, the rivalry stimulated a good deal of observational radio astronomy and theoretical work. In 1957 Gold accepted a professorship at Harvard University. Two years later he joined the faculty of Cornell University, where he became chairman of the astronomy department and director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, and where he would remain until he retired in 1986. There he built up the astronomy department and conducted pioneering research into such topics as cosmic rays, the lunar surface, and solar flares. He also worked as a consultant for NASA during the Apollo Moon missions. Among the many honors he received, Gold was elected to the Royal Society in 1964 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1968. In 1985 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. He died of heart disease in 2004 at age 84. (Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)

Date in History: 22 May 1920