Jansky, Karl (1905-1950)
American radio engineer
One of the ways modern astronomers study the Universe is by tracing light waves through telescopes; another is by studying radio waves. The man who discovered the existence of these extraterrestrial radio waves, and thus founded radio astronomy, was Karl Jansky. Employed as an engineer in Bell Laboratories, New Jersey, Jansky was assigned the job of reducing static noise on transatlantic radio transmissions, and it was while inquiring into the origin of this static that he made his discovery.
The third of six children, Karl Guthe Jansky was born in Norman, Oklahoma, while that region was still a territory. His father, Cyril Jansky, was a college professor who taught electrical engineering and eventually became the head of the School of Applied Science at the University of Wisconsin. Jansky was named after Karl Guthe, a German-born physicist under whom his father had studied at the University of Michigan. Jansky attended the University of Wisconsin, where he played on the ice hockey team. He hoped to join the Reserve Officer's Training Program there but was diagnosed with a chronic kidney condition called Bright's disease; Jansky suffered from it all his life. He wrote his senior thesis on vacuum tubes and earned his B.S.
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