Antony Hewish designed a radio survey instrument to identify compact sources through interplanetary scintillation: rapid intensity changes caused by propagation through the solar wind. While operating and inspecting its records, his research student Jocelyn Bell Burnell identified the unusual signal that became the first known pulsar.
The team checked the repeated pulses against instrumental and terrestrial explanations. Their recurrence at a fixed celestial direction helped establish an astronomical origin. The discovery illustrates how an instrument designed for one variability process can uncover another when its unexpected signals are investigated.[ref]
Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source by Antony Hewish and others. 1968 discovery report
[ref]Little Green Men, White Dwarfs or Pulsars? by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Telescope design, record inspection, fast recordings and sidereal-time checks
Portrait of Antony Hewish
. Woodruff T. Sullivan III; NRAO/AUI Archives, Sullivan Collection; rights NRAO/AUI/NSF. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. Articles by others on the same topic
Antony Hewish is a British astrophysicist known primarily for his work in radio astronomy. He was born on May 11, 1924. Hewish is most famous for his role in the discovery of pulsars, which are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation.