| Grote Reber (December 22, 1911 – December 20, 2002) was one of the pioneers of radio astronomy. He was instrumental in repeating Karl Jansky's pioneering but somewhat simple work, and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequencies. Reber was born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and graduated from Armour Institute of Technology (later Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1933 with a degree in radio engineering. He was an amateur radio operator, and worked for various radio manufacturers in Chicago from 1933 to 1947. When he learned of Jansky's work in 1933, he decided this was the field he wanted to work in, and applied to Bell Labs where Jansky was now working. However this was during the height of the Great Depression and there were no jobs available. Instead Reber decided to build his own radio telescope in his back yard in Wheaton. His design was considerably more advanced than Jansky's, consisting of a parabolic sheet metal mirror 9 meters in diameter, focusing to a radio receiver 8 meters above the mirror. The entire assembly was mounted on a tilting stand allowing it to be pointed in various directions, although not turned. The telescope was completed in 1937. Reference |  |