Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.

Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. is an American astrophysicist, born in 1941, known for discovering the first binary pulsar together with Russell Alan Hulse, a find that opened new possibilities for studying gravitation and provided the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves through orbital measurements matching Einstein predictions. He held positions at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Massachusetts Amherst before joining Princeton University, where he became the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Physics and Dean of Faculty before retiring in 2006. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993, shared with Hulse, and the Albert Einstein Medal in 1991, and is also known in amateur radio circles for developing the WSJT and FT8 weak-signal communication protocols. He received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1992.