John Lambourne Locke | The Canadian Encyclopedia

Article

John Lambourne Locke

John Lambourne Locke, CM, FRSC, astronomer (born 1 May 1921 in Brantford, ON; died 29 April 2010 in New Westminster, BC).

John Lambourne Locke, CM, FRSC, astronomer (born 1 May 1921 in Brantford, ON; died 29 April 2010 in New Westminster, BC). After service in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War, Locke graduated from the University of Toronto in 1946. He received his doctorate in 1949 and was appointed astrophysicist at the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, that year and chief of its stellar physics division in 1959. From 1959 until 1962 he was officer in charge of the new Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory near Penticton, British Columbia.

In 1966 he was appointed radio astronomer in the radio and electrical engineering division of the National Research Council. He became associate director of the division in 1970 and was first director of the council's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics from 1975 to 1985. Locke was a member of the Canadian team that in 1967 successfully combined simultaneous observations from radio telescopes thousands of kilometres apart, and the team received a Rumford Premium from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.