Edward Fomalont (born May 14, 1940) is an American scientist working at the

National Radio Astronomy Observatory The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a federally funded research and development center of the United States National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. for the purpose of radio a ...

. He specializes in radio galaxies,

X-ray binary X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component, called the ''donor'' (usually a relatively normal star), to the other component, called the ''accretor'', which ...

systems,

astrometry Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way. His ...

, and

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. He has published more than 330 papers in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings of scientific conferences. In 1975, Fomalont and Richard Sramek made a first radio-interferometric occultation experiment to test the theory of general relativity by measuring the bending of microwave radiation in the

gravitational field In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influences that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body. Thus, a gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenome ...

of the Sun. Fomalont and colleagues made the most precise VLBI test of general relativity in 2005 that had reached precision of few parts in 10,000. In 2002, Fomalont and

Sergei Kopeikin Sergei Kopeikin (born April 10, 1956) is a USSR-born theoretical physicist and astronomer presently living and working in the United States, where he holds the position of Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. ...

claimed to have measured the

speed of gravity In classical theories of gravitation, the changes in a gravitational field propagate. A change in the distribution of energy and momentum of matter results in subsequent alteration, at a distance, of the gravitational field which it produces. In ...

in the dedicated experiment by observing the tangential component in the gravitational bending of light of a

quasar A quasar is an extremely Luminosity, luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is pronounced , and sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. This emission from a galaxy nucleus is powered by a supermassive black hole with a m ...

caused by the orbital motion of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

with respect to the barycenter of the solar system. This claim was disputed but vigorously defended by Kopeikin and Fomalont in a number of subsequent publications. Fomalont is an active participant in many international radio

interferometric Interferometry is a technique which uses the ''interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber op ...

projects including the VLBI Space Observatory Programme and

Square Kilometre Array The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKA ...

Bibliometric information

As of March 2024, the

NASA ADS The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...

database yields a

h index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of 77, with more than 22737 non-self citations. The tori index and riq index are 99.8 and 163, respectively.

References

External links

Fomalont's NRAO homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fomalont, Edward American astronomers Living people 1940 births