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Interviewee: Richard Quentin Twiss. Interviewer: Woodruff T. Sullivan III. NRAO/AUI Archives.

Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Quentin Twiss developed intensity interferometry, using correlated fluctuations in detected light rather than direct combination of optical field amplitudes. Their experiments established how the correlation changes with the separation between detectors.

Applied to stars, the method connects spatial coherence to apparent angular size. It measures a statistical property of the arriving photons, allowing stellar diameters to be inferred even when atmospheric fluctuations make direct optical phase measurements difficult.^[ref][ref]