Thomas Gold

Thomas Gold was an American astrophysicist of Austrian origin. After studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, he worked during the Second World War as a scientific officer for the British Admiralty on radar and anti-submarine warfare. He taught at Harvard University and served as chair of Cornell University's astronomy department from 1959 to 1981, where he founded the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research and helped oversee the construction of the Arecibo radio observatory. Gold published on astronomy, geophysics, and planetary physics, and was among the first to explain pulsars as rotating neutron stars. Later, he studied the formation of oil and natural gas and proposed an abiotic origin for hydrocarbons.