What did frank drake do

Frank Donald Drake May 28, — September 2, 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 , an attempt at extraterrestrial communication.

He developed the Drake equation , [ 1 ] 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 , an extraterrestrial radio transmission of astronomical and biological information about Earth. Born on May 28, , in Chicago, Illinois, [ 2 ] Drake showed an early interest in electronics and chemistry. His ideas about the possibility of extraterrestrial life were reinforced by a lecture from astrophysicist Otto Struve in He then went on to graduate school at Harvard University from to where he received a M.

His doctoral advisor was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. At NRAO, he conducted research into radio emissions from the planets of the Solar System : using the radio telescope at Green Bank, Drake discovered the ionosphere and magnetosphere of Jupiter , and observed the atmosphere of Venus. He also mapped the radio emission from the Galactic Center.

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However, Drake decided to publicize his project after Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published a paper in Nature in September , entitled "Searching for Interstellar Communications". No extraterrestrial signals were detected and the project was terminated in July After learning about Project Ozma, Carl Sagan then a graduate student contacted Drake, initiating a lifelong collaboration between them.

In , Drake devised the Drake equation , which attempted estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be detectable in the Milky Way. He returned to Cornell in , this time as a member of the faculty academic staff , where he would spend the next two decades.