Ronald Drever

Education Drever was educated at Glasgow Academy followed by University of Glasgow where he was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1953 followed by a PhD in 1959 for research on orbital electron capture using proportional counters.

Career and research After receiving his PhD from the University of Glasgow in 1959, Drever initiated the Glasgow project to detect gravitational waves in the sixties, after which he established the University’s first dedicated gravitational wave research group in 1970. The same year Drever was recruited to form a gravitational wave program at Caltech. In 1984 Drever left Glasgow to work full-time at Caltech.

Drever's contributions to the design and implementation of the LIGO interferometers were critically important to their ability to function in the extreme sensitivity realm required for detection of gravitational waves (10−23 strain).

Drever's final work involved the development of magnetically levitated optical tables for seismic isolation of experimental apparatus.

Honors and awards Drever was recognized by numerous awards including: Fellowship of the American Physical Society (1998) Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002) Shared the Einstein Prize (2007) with Rainer Weiss The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016) The Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2016) The Shaw Prize (2016) (together with Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss). The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics (2016). Smithsonian, American Ingenuity Award (2016) The Harvey Prize (2016) Fellowship of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Personal life Ronald was a paternal cousin to cartographer and writer, Tim Robinson and paternal uncle of acoustic ecologist, John Levack Drever.