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James Roger Prior Angel (born February 7, 1941) is a British-American astrophysicist known for his contributions to astronomy and the design and fabrication of large optics for telescopes, concentrated solar power and other applications. He developed the spin casting and stressed lap polishing techniques used at the University of Arizona Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab to produce mirrors for some of the largest optical telescopes in the world. He is a Regents' Professor of Astronomy and Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

Education
Angel attended St Peter's College, Oxford, receiving a B.A. in physics in 1963. After earning an M.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology he returned to Oxford and received a D.Phil. in 1967. While studying atomic physics at Oxford's Clarendon Laboratory he built an early computer to allow for the first direct measurement an atom's quadrupole moment.

Career and research
After moving to New York City to accept a position in the Columbia University Physics Department Angel shifted his focus to astrophysics, building sounding rocket X-ray spectroscopes and ground-based telescope polarimeters for the observation of degenerate stars and other objects. In 1970, he was among the first to observe white dwarf magnetism. He left Columbia in 1973 as an associate professor, moving to Tucson, Arizona to join the the University of Arizona Department of Astronomy first as an associate professor and then, in 1975, as a full professor.

After measuring the transmission efficiency of modern fused-silica optical fiber in 1977 Angel proposed two applications. The first was an telescope array to combine light from 100 2.5-meter mirrors to achieve a combined aperture of 500 square meters, the Fiber-Linked Optical Array Telescope (FLOAT). The second was the use of optical fibers to separate and obtain the spectra of multiple sources of light from a single telescope image, the now widely-used technique of multi-object spectroscopy. John Hill, his graduate student at the time, and Angel were the first to demonstrate the technique in 1980, measuring the redshifts of 26 individual galaxies based on a single exposure.

In 1979, he proposed a lobster-eye optics design (the Angel multi-channel lens) for X-ray astronomy. The design was first demonstrated on a NASA sounding rocket in 2013 and used for the Einstein Probe X-ray space telescope launched in 2024.

In 2006, Angel proposed assembling a space sunshade composed of trillions of 60 cm disks of lightweight refractive material at Lagrange Point 1 - stable orbit between the Earth and the Sun - where they would deflect 2% of solar radiation onto the Earth to counteract global warming. He estimated that the project could be developed and deployed over 25 years for less than 0.5% of world gross domestic product (GDP) over that time period.

On August 23, 2012, Angel and his inventions were the subject of a story on NPR's Morning Edition.

Awards
Angel received a Sloan Research Fellowship for physics in 1970. In 1976 he was awarded the American Astonomical Society's Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. In 2010 Angel shared the Kavli Prize for Astrophysics with Jerry Nelson and Raymond Wilson for innovations in the field of telescope design.

Angel is an Honorary Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. He is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1990 he was made a fellow of both the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2000 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.