Roger Clifton Jennison

Roger Clifton Jennison(18 December 1922 – 29 December 2006) worked as a radio astronomer atJodrell Bankunder the guidance ofRobert Hanbury Brown.Jennison made a number of discoveries in the field ofradio astronomy,including the discovery of the double nature of radio sourceCygnus A(3C405.0) withM K Das Guptaand the mapping ofCassiopeia AwithV Latham.

Early life

Jennison was born inGrimsby,England,in 1922. His education was atClee Grammar School for Boys.He was commissioned fromRAFaircrew to the Technical Branch-Signals, where he developedradarandmicrowavesystems using themagnetron.

Radio astronomy

In the 1950s he developed a new observable for obtaining information about visibility phases in aninterferometerwhen delay errors are present called theclosure phase.He performed the first measurements of closure phase at optical wavelengths. Jennison saw greater potential for his technique in radio interferometry, and proposed that it should be tested on a three-element radio interferometer atJodrell Bank.In 1958 he successfully demonstrated its effectiveness at radio wavelengths, but it only became widely used forlong baseline radio interferometryin 1974. A minimum of three antennas are required. This method was used for the firstVLBImeasurements, and a modified form of this approach ( "Self-Calibration" ) is still used today atradio,opticalandinfraredwavelengths.

Academic career

Jennison was appointed to theUniversity of KentatCanterburyin 1965 and was the first Professor of Physical Electronics at the University. Within a year he established the Electronics Laboratory (later Department of Electronics and now School of Engineering and Digital Arts) at the University. Prior to his appointment at Kent he was Senior Lecturer in Radio Astronomy at Jodrell Bank Observatory and Senior Lecturer in Physics,Manchester University.

His research interests extended torelativity,studying paths of light in rotating systems, and also to studyingwater diviningandball lightning.With the latter, Jennison reported his personal encounter with the phenomenon as an airline passenger during a flight in March 1963, when a glowing ball of light was created inside the aircraft following a lightning strike. After retirement he was appointed as the emeritus professor of physical electronics at the University of Kent. He died on 29 December 2006.

The building which he helped design to house the Electronics Laboratory, now the seat of the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, was named after him by the University of Kent in 2009.

Interest in the arts

Jennison was a co-founder of theCanterbury Society of Artand was involved in the activities of theCanterbury Arts Council. He was also a fellow of theRoyal Astronomical Society,theInstitution of Electrical Engineersand theRoyal Society of Arts.

Roger Clifton Jennison's interest in the arts may have been stimulated by his father, George Robert Jennison, who was a well-known portrait painter in his home town of Grimsby and whose work is still on display inGrimsby Town Hall.

External links

• School of Engineering and Digital Arts (formerly Department of Electronics), University of Kent
• A phase sensitive interferometer technique for the measurement of the Fourier transforms of spatial brightness distributions of small angular extent
• Canterbury Society of Art