'Wizards of the micro-waves': A history of the radio astronomy community (Great Britain, Australia, United States)

This thesis examines the formation of a community of radio astronomers. The radio astronomer emerged out of the negotiated space created in the intersection of radio physical instrumentation and astronomical practice. Examining the radio astronomy community highlights the significance of scientific coalescence and cooperation in the production of scientific knowledge. The practitioners of radio astronomy coalesced locally around the large centerpiece instruments that became landmarks, significant reference points for the community as a whole. Networks of professional and personal contact and exchange formed between these landmarks, enabling apprentices, the first generation of ‘radio astronomers’ to be trained in a multifaceted endeavor that crossed disciplinary and national boundaries very easily.; Important to this study is the international context of radio astronomy's growth and development both locally in Britain, Australia, and the United States as well as the substantial interchange between each country and each site within each country. The emergence of commonality, cooperation, and the ability of practitioners to trade expertise between sites of scientific work designed to be individually unique is fundamental to an understanding of community as an activity. While the radio practitioners, their electronics, and their laboratories became astronomers, telescopes, and observatories, it was largely traditional astronomers' altered conception of astronomy that permitted the space in which the radio astronomy community grew.