Ronald Drever

Ronald William Prest Drever (26 October 1931 – 7 March 2017) was a Scottish experimental physicist. He was a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, co-founded the LIGO project, and was a co-inventor of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique for laser stabilisation. This work was instrumental in the first detection of gravitational waves in September 2015.

Drever died on 7 March 2017, aged 85.

Drever was educated at the 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.

After his PhD, Drever did postdoctoral research in Glasgow before being recruited to form a gravitational wave program 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 most recent 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:

• 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)