Ronalds Obituary was in the SMH 24/8/2007. He was educated at Randwick, Woollahra & Sydney University. He was one of the universities three honorees when alumm awards were institutured in 1992 with a citation for brain scanning. After graduation, he joined A.W.A., then CSIRO, where he worked with radar & meet Helen Elliott, whom he married. He earned his PhD in physics at Cambridge University in 1950, then returned to CSIRO for four years before moving to the United States in 1954. After a year at the University of California at Berkeley, he moved to Stanford University, where he spent the rest of his career, & he died on campus.
With colleagues at Stanford, he designed a radio telescope called a spectroheliograph, to receive & evaluate microwaves emitted by the sun. In 1961 he built an array of 32 radio telescope dishes with which he monitored the sun's surface for 11 years, producing daily maps of surface temperatures. NASA relied on the system for warnings of sunspot eruptions during the first moon landing. The 32 small dishes were demolished in the 1970's & replaced with five larger dishes, naming it the Bracewell Observatory. In the 1970's other scientists applies these techniques in developing X-Ray imiging of tumours, called tomography, & other forms of medical imiging that scan eloctro-magnetic & radio waves. His contributions to medical imiging led him to be the first Australian to become an Associate of the Institute of Medicine.
In the 1980's he combined his expertise in astronomy with geology to examine layers of red sandstones that he & others theorised must be connected with the sun's activity. The researchers proposed that sunspots had effected temperatures on Earth.
He stopped teaching in 1991, when he became a professor emeritus of electrical engineering, but still went on working. Although he became a US citizen, he was named Officer of the Order of Australia in 1998.
He is survived by his wife Helen, a son Mark in San Jose, & a daughter Wendy, who lives in England, & a brother Mark, in Melbourne.
