Paul Wild (Australian scientist)

Paul Wild AC CBE FRS FRSA FTSE FAA
Wild when Chairman of CSIRO
Chairman of the CSIRO
In office 14 December 1978 – 24 September 1985
Preceded by	Victor Burgmann
Succeeded by	Norman Boardman
Personal details
Born	(1923-05-17)17 May 1923 Sheffield, England
Died	10 May 2008(2008-05-10) (aged 84) Canberra, Australia
Alma mater	MA, ScD (Cantab.)
Occupation	Radio astronomy, solar physics, microwave navigation
Known for	Radio observations of the Sun, invention of microwave landing system, chairmanship of CSIRO, instigation of Very Fast Train project

John Paul Wild AC CBE FRS^[1] FRSA FTSE FAA (17 May 1923 – 10 May 2008) was a British-born Australian scientist. Following service in World War II as a radar officer in the Royal Navy, he became a radio astronomer in Australia for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the fore-runner of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). In the 1950s and 1960s he made discoveries based on radio observations of the Sun. In the late 1960s and early 1970s his team built and operated the world's first solar radio-spectrographs and subsequently the Culgoora radio-heliograph, near Narrabri, New South Wales. The Paul Wild Observatory at Culgoora is named after him.

In 1972 Paul Wild invented Interscan, a standard microwave landing system. From 1978 to 1985 he was chairman of the CSIRO, during which time he expanded the organisation's scope and directed its restructuring. He retired from the CSIRO to lead (from 1986) the Very Fast Train Joint Venture, a private sector project that sought to build a high-speed railway between Australia's two most populous cities. Lack of support from government brought it to an end in 1991. In his later years he worked on gravitational theory.