Frank Drake

Also known as Frank Donald Drake, Dr. Frank Donald Drake

American astronomer and astrophysicist (1930–2022)

Film & TV

Chicago, Illinois

Frank Donald Drake (born May 28, 1930) is an American astronomer and astrophysicist. He is involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, including the founding of SETI, mounting the first observational attempts at detecting extraterrestrial communications in 1960 in Project Ozma, developing the Drake equation, and as the creator of the Arecibo Message, a digital encoding of an…

Known for

The Farthest — Self2018
The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins — Self - Astronomer2014
Gaia Symphony — Self1992
Target... Earth? — Self (as Dr. Frank Drake)1980

via TMDB

Key facts

Born: Frank Donald Drake , ( 1930-05-28 ) May 28, 1930, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: September 2, 2022 (2022-09-02) (aged 92), Aptos, California , U.S.
Alma mater: Cornell University Harvard University
Known for: Arecibo message Drake equation Pioneer plaque Project Ozma Voyager Golden Record
Spouses: Elizabeth Procter Bell ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1952 ; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 1976 ) Amahl Shakhashiri ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1978 )
Children: 5, including Nadia
Fields: Astronomy , astrophysics
Institutions: University of California, Santa Cruz , SETI Institute , Cornell University
Thesis: Neutral hydrogen in galactic clusters (1958)
Doctoral advisor: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Doctoral students: Donald C. Backer

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Frank
Family name: Drake
Gender: male
Citizenship: United States
Place of birth: Chicago
Place of death: Aptos
Occupation: astrophysicist
Employer: University of California, Santa Cruz
Languages spoken: English language
Doctoral advisor: Thomas Gold
Doctoral student: Donald C. Backer
Field of work: extraterrestrial civilization
Image: Dr. Frank Drake.jpg
Number of children: 5

Show 5 more facts

Commons category: Frank Drake
date of birth: 1930-00-00
member of: International Astronomical Union
name in native language: Frank Donald Drake
date of death: 2022-00-00

Sources (5)

via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

Frank Donald Drake (May 28, 1930 – September 2, 2022) was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist.

He began his career as a radio astronomer, studying the planets of the Solar System and later pulsars. Drake expanded his interests to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), beginning with Project Ozma in 1960, an attempt at extraterrestrial communication. He developed the Drake equation, which attempts to quantify the number of intelligent lifeforms that could potentially be discovered. Working with Carl Sagan, Drake helped to design the Pioneer plaque, the first physical message flown beyond the Solar System, and was part of the team that developed the Voyager Golden Record. Drake designed and implemented the Arecibo message in 1974, an extraterrestrial radio transmission of astronomical and biological information about Earth. He is the father of Advanced SETI.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Frank Drake” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.