Wilbur Norman Christiansen
Wilbur Norman "Chris" Christiansen (9 August 1913 in Melbourne, Victoria – 26 April 2007 in Dorrigo, New South Wales) was a pioneer Australian radio astronomer and electrical engineer.
Christiansen built the first grating array for scanning the sun at the radio astronomy field station at Potts Hill, New South Wales. A later array at Badgerys Creek, New South Wales, the Chris Cross Telescope, was named after Christiansen. For many years, he was chairman of the electrical engineering department at the University of Sydney.
His father was a clergyman and his mother a music teacher. He was colloquially known as "Chris". Christiansen died on 26 April 2007 in Dorrigo, New South Wales, near his son Tim and his brother Steven. His wife Elspeth died in 2001 and their son Peter, also a space physicist, died in 1992.
External links
- Biographical entry, Encyclopedia of Australian Science
- CSIROpedia entry (comprehensive)
- Eric Weisstein's World of Biography entry
- Obituary, The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 May 2007
- Chinese Academy of Sciences obituary
- Wilbur Norman Christiansen 1913-2007, R.H. Frater and W.M. Goss, arXiv
- Christiansen, W. N. (Wilbur Norman) National Library of Australia Trove
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