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This talk outlines the personal story of my long career in pulsar research. It began shortly before publication of the first pulsar discovery by Antony Hewish, Jocelyn Bell, et al. In 1968, and is still continuing. I have been involved in many aspects of pulsar research over the years. This talk emphasizes my role in the development of new receiver systems for the Parkes 64m radio telescope in NSW, Australia, and their use in pulsar searches at Parkes.

It also covers the period 1969 to 1974 that my wife and I spent in the USA, initially at Charlottesville in Virginia and later at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in western Massachusetts. There I worked extensively with Joseph Taylor and other colleagues.

The pulsar searches at Parkes discovered many pulsars, twice more than doubling the number of known pulsars. They also uncovered the famous Double Pulsar, PSR J0737-3039A/B. With Michael Kramer and other colleagues, we have shown that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity accurately describes the motions of the Double Pulsar (and other systems).

I established the first "Pulsar Timing Array" (PTA) at Parkes in 2003. Since then PTAs have been established in the USA, Europe, India, China and South Africa. With these PTAs, very low-frequency (nanoHertz) gravitational waves can be detected and hopefully a definitive detection will be announced soon.

Finally, my interactions with many students and colleagues over the years have been of great benefit to me and hopefully to them also.

BIO

Dr Manchester is widely acknowledged as a world authority on pulsars. His monograph "Pulsars" with Professor J. H. Taylor of Princeton, published in 1977, remains the standard reference work on the subject. Following the major survey (Manchester et al. 1978) which more than doubled the number of known pulsars, Dr Manchester and his collaborators have made extensive contributions to the study of the galactic distribution and period evolution of pulsars. He has also been active in other areas of astrophysics, notably the study of the spiral structure of our Galaxy (Robinson et al.,1987) and the structure and evolution of supernova remnants (Manchester, 1987). From 1981 to 1987 he was leader of the Astrophysics Group in the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics. Dr Manchester has been a leading advocate of the development of a radio synthesis telescope in Australia and is a member of the Advisory Committee and Chairman of the Scientific Objectives Committee for the Australia Telescope.

Host: Dongzi Li