Hulse, Russell Alan

(born Nov. 28, 1950, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. physicist. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. With his professor, Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., he discovered dozens of pulsars. One pulsar, PSR 1913+16, proved to be a binary star; the two stars' enormous interacting gravitational fields provided the first means of detecting gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. For their discovery of PSR 1913+16, Hulse and Taylor shared a 1993 Nobel Prize.

Find more information on Hulse, Russell Alan. Upgrade to Britannica Online for more on Hulse, Russell Alan.