English radio astronomer who worked on radar during the World War II. Afterwards, he led the radio astronomy group at Cambridge. He completed the 2C and 3C surveys with an interferometer containing four parabolic cylinder antennas in a rectangle which he had designed. The original 2C survey suffered from source confusion, so the 3C survey was made at roughly half the frequency. Ryle devised aperture synthesis (synthesis imaging ) and, in 1960-61, was the second person to use Earth rotation synthesis (after Högbom's modest test). Ryle also invented the technique of phase switching and built a 5 km telescope with four fixed and four movable 42 foot antennas. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in physics with Hewish.

Additional biographies: Bruce Medalists, Bonn