Sir Martin Ryle (27 September 1918, Brighton, Sussex – 14 October 1984, Cambridge) was a British radio astronomer.
Ryle developed revolutionary radio telescope systems. He used them for to locate weak radio sources more accurately. With better equipment, he observed the most distant known galaxies of the universe. Ryle and Antony Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974. That was the first Nobel Prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research.