Merle Antony Tuve

American geophysicist
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Quick Facts
Born:
June 27, 1901, Canton, S.D., U.S.
Died:
May 20, 1982, Bethesda, Md. (aged 80)
Subjects Of Study:
ionosphere

Merle Antony Tuve (born June 27, 1901, Canton, S.D., U.S.—died May 20, 1982, Bethesda, Md.) was an American research physicist and geophysicist who developed the radio-wave exploration method for the ionosphere. The observations he made provided the theoretical foundation for the development of radar. With the American physicist Gregory Breit, Tuve in 1925 succeeded in measuring the height of the Earth’s ionosphere by bouncing short-pulse radio waves off its ionized layer of air and determining the amount of time taken by the echoes to return. In 1926 Tuve investigated long-range seismic refraction (change in the path through the Earth of ...(100 of 209 words)