Frank Drake
Frank Donald Drake (May 28, 1930 – September 2, 2022) was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist.
Frank Drake | |
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Drake speaking at Cornell University in 2017 | |
| Born | Frank Donald Drake May 28, 1930 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | September 2, 2022 (aged 92) Aptos, California, U.S. |
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| Spouses | Elizabeth Procter Bell
(m. 1952; div. 1976)Amahl Shakhashiri (m. 1978) |
| Children | 5, including Nadia |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy, astrophysics |
| Institutions | University of California, Santa Cruz, SETI |
| Doctoral advisor | Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin |
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 communications. 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 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.
Drake worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cornell University, University of California at Santa Cruz and the SETI Institute.