Prof Ron Ekers

Ronald Ekers has had an international career involving research in radio astronomy and radio astronomical techniques. He was appointed Foundation Director of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility in 1988 and he continued in this role until 1 March 2003, when he took up his Federation Fellowship. He is now a CSIRO Fellow and an adjunct Professor at Curtin University in Perth.
He graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1963 and gained his PhD in astronomy at the Australian National University in 1967. His professional career has taken him to the California Institute of Technology, the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, the Kapteyn Laboratory in Groningen, The Netherlands, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, New Mexico USA. He was director of the VLA, the major national radio telescope in the USA, from 1980 until 1987. He has been heavily involved in all aspects of the International proposal to build a Square Kilometer Array (SKA) since its inception.

He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a Foreign Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science in 1993, a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2003, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005 and the US National Academy of Science in 2018.

Ron is a former President of the International Astronomical Union (2003-2006). In 2003, he received Australia’s prestigious Centenary Medal, and two years later was awarded the Flinders Medal from the Australian Academy of Science. In 2014, he received the Grote Reber Medal for innovative contributions to radio astronomy. He was recognised as an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2018.