Ray Norris is an astrophysicist and science communicator, based at theCSIROAustralia Telescope National Facility, andWestern Sydney University, and conducts research inastrophysics andAboriginal Astronomy.
Ray Norris was born inLondon and grew up inBrookmans Park,Hertfordshire,England in 1953. He attended high school atSt. Albans School and then went toCambridge University, where he received an honours degree in theoretical physics.
He then went to theJodrell Bank Observatory of theUniversity of Manchester where he received his PhD in radio-astronomy in 1978, working onastrophysical masers. At the same time, he started to develop an interest in thearchaeoastronomy of Stonehenge and othermegalithic observatories, joined a group of students led byClive Ruggles and spent several years surveying thestone circles of the British Isles.
He moved toAustralia in 1983 to work for theCSIROAustralia Telescope National Facility. He was appointed as head of astrophysics in 1994, and deputy director in 2000. In 2001 he led the successful bid for Australian astronomy under the Australian federal government’s “Major National Research Facilities” program, and then became director of the Australian astronomy MNRF. In 2005 he resigned from management positions to return to research. In 2013 he retired from CSIRO but was appointed as a CSIRO Honorary Fellow. In 2015 he was appointed as a Research Professor atWestern Sydney University.
In 2011, Norris published his first novel,Graven Images.[2]
Norris is well known for his work onAboriginal Astronomy,[3] and was an adjunct professor in the department of Indigenous Studies atMacquarie University. His work has featured in many radio and TV programs, including ABC TV'sMessage Stick,[4] and ABC Radio National'sThe First Astronomers.[5] In August 2009 he featured in a two-manThe First Astronomers show with Wardaman elderBill Yidumduma Harney at the Darwin Festival.[6][7] In 2009 he published the bookEmu Dreaming with his wife, Priscilla Norris
From 2000 to 2005 Norris led the Australia Telescope Large Area Survey (ATLAS) project,[8] imaging the faintest radio galaxies and star-forming galaxies in the universe, to understand how they form and evolve.
In 2009 he led a team that proposed theEMU project, operating on the newASKAP telescope to survey of the sky at radio wavelengths, and led the EMU project until he stepped down in 2020. He also researches cosmology and dark energy.[9]
In 2020 he led a team that discovered previously unknown circles of radio emission in the sky, which they called "Odd radio circles".
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