Roger Angel
British-born American astronomer
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Education
Angel graduated from St Peter's College, Oxford, with a BA, in 1963, from California Institute of Technology, with an MS, in 1966, and from the University of Oxford, with a D Phil, in 1967. While at Oxford's Clarendon Laboratory he built an early computer to allow for the first direct measurement an atom's quadrupole moment.
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Career and research
After receiving his doctorate, Angel moved to New York to take a position in the Columbia University Physics Department. He began research in astrophysics and astronomical instrumentation, building sounding rocket X-ray spectroscopes and ground-based telescope polarimeters for the observation of degenerate stars and other objects. In 1970, he was among the first to observe white dwarf magnetism.
Angel moved to Tucson in 1973 to join the University of Arizona Department of Astronomy. In 1977, he proposed using fused-silica optical fiber to separate and obtain the spectra of multiple sources of light from a single telescope image, the now widely-used technique of multi-object spectroscopy. In 1980, John Hill and Angel were the first to demonstrate the technique, measuring the redshifts of 26 individual galaxies based on a single exposure.
In 1979, he proposed the lobster-eye optics design for X-ray astronomy. The design was first demonstrated on a NASA sounding rocket in 2013 and used for the Einstein Probe X-ray space telescope launched in 2024.
In 2006, Angel proposed a space sunshade composed of trillions of refractive disks in stable orbit between the Earth and the Sun where they would deflect enough solar radiation to counteract global warming. He estimated that the project could be developed over 25 years for less than 0.5% of world gross domestic product over that time.