Ray Klebesadel

Who is Ray Klebesadel?

Ray Klebesadel is a scientist, now retired, who was a member of the gamma-ray astronomy group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that discovered cosmic gamma-ray bursts using data from the Vela satellites, which were deployed by the United States after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, to police the ban on nuclear tests in space. The unexplained gamma-ray flashes were first detected in 1967, but remained classified until it was determined that they were of cosmic origin, not related to treaty violations. The discovery was published in 1973 as an Astrophysical Journal Letter, co-authored by Ian Strong and Roy Olson also of LANL, entitled "Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts of Cosmic Origin". It was published again in 1976 in the Scientific American.

Klebesadel was selected as a Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1989.