Joseph Taylor

Joseph Taylor and his graduate student Russell Hulse discovered the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar in 1974—a system of two neutron stars orbiting each other, with one being an active pulsar. The discovery provided the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity.

Taylor shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics with Russell Hulse for their discovery of the binary pulsar. The prize recognized that the system's orbital decay matched exactly the energy loss expected from gravitational wave emission.

Hulse and Taylor found it using the 305-meter radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico during a systematic survey for new pulsars. The irregularities in the pulsar's signal period revealed the presence of a companion neutron star.

Taylor spent most of his career at Princeton University, where he was a professor of physics for decades. Much of his research was conducted in collaboration with radio astronomers using Arecibo Observatory.