The death has been announced of Professor Ron Drever, the University of Glasgow graduate and later post-doctoral researcher, and pioneer in the study of gravitational waves.

Last night, Professor Drever's family issued this statement:

Professor Ronald W P Drever

26 October 1931 – 7 March 2017

"The family announce with great sadness the death of their much-loved uncle and brother, Professor Ronald W P Drever on Tuesday 7th March, aged 85. He passed away peacefully in Edinburgh following a short, but rapid deterioration in his health.

"Ronald dedicated his lifetime to researching gravitational wave detection through LIGO and despite the fact dementia featured in his latter years, he was still aware of the global recognition that he and his colleagues at Caltech University in California and also the University of Glasgow had achieved.

"Among the many awards include The Gruber Cosmology Prize, The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, The Shaw Prize in Astronomy, The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, The Smithsonian, American Ingenuity Award for Physical Sciences and The Harvey Prize in Science and Technology.”

"We are extremely proud of Ronald and his scientific achievements; he was unique and unconventional but very caring with a strong sense of humour. He will be sadly missed by us all."

Archives: The University of Glasgow Story - Professor Ronald Drever

A tribute - Professor Sheila Rowan MBE, Director of the Institute for Gravitational Research / Scotland’s Chief Scientific Adviser

The recent news of the loss of Prof Ron Drever is most sad and represents a loss of one of the early pioneers and visionaries in the global gravitational wave community.

Ron was one of the co-founders of the US LIGO project. Following on from his early work in gravitational wave research in Glasgow and some years of a split-appointment between Scotland and California, he left Glasgow in 1984 to take up a Professorial post at Caltech, bringing with him expertise in in laser interferometry and detector design. Bringing those areas together with a number of other original ideas formed the basis for the original LIGO project for a gravitational wave observatory.

Ron continued to work on the LIGO project in Caltech until 1994 and became Professor Emeritus from Clatech in 2002. Pioneering work continued in Glasgow led before me by Ron's former student Prof Jim Hough on new and novel technologies to help create the 'Advanced' version of the LIGO instruments, finally capable of making the first gravitational wave detections announced just last year.

Jim Hough & Ron Drever

First published: 8 March 2017

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