Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. (born March 29, 1941) is an American astrophysicist. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics with Russell Alan Hulse "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation". This was the first indirect detection of gravitational waves, later directly detected by Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss.
Early life and education
Taylor was born in Philadelphia to Joseph Hooton Taylor Sr. and Sylvia Evans Taylor, both of whom had Quaker roots for many generations, and grew up in Cinnaminson Township, New Jersey. He attended the Moorestown Friends School in Moorestown Township, New Jersey, where he excelled in math.
- Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1985)
- Nobel Prize in Physics (1993)
- Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1995)
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External links
- including the Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1993 Binary Pulsars and Relativistic Gravity