Contributions to radio astronomy

This thesis includes contributions to radioastronomy in a number of areas including the development of instrumentation for and observations of the first binary pulsar, pulsar searches, pulsar polarisation, general pulsar observations and radio emission from Jupiter and the Sun. In addition I have contributed to the development of a number of novel observing techniques. Much of the work described here involved the use of non standard equipment configurations at national observatories such as ANRAO at Parkes and the NAIC at Arecibo. The success of these operations owes a great deal to the cooperation of the observatory staff and the help of my colleagues. The difficulties involved in these operations and the wide range of expertise needed to perform any individual experiment means that one must necessarily work as part of a team. Such collaboration has been vital in getting the experiments done and has resulted in joint authorship of many of the resulting publications. I have prefaced this thesis with a short review concentrating on my contribution to the material presented. 'This review only covers what I regard as the key papers and topics. The review is followed by a full list of the papers submitted, grouped together under topics rather than in chronological order. Each group is preceded by a brief comment on the major papers and my contribution where multiple authors are involved. I have included a number of unrefereed IAU circulars among the publications because they announce to the astronomical community Observations or discoveries of particular interest or short lifetime which need confirmation. All of the material presented here is original, I have submitted none of it for the degree of Doctor of Science.