The Midnight Shift at Jodrell Bank

In 1957, a young radio astronomer named Bernard Lovell stood beneath the massive dish of Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England, waiting. For years, skeptics had called his giant telescope a folly — an expensive piece of scrap metal that would never justify its cost. Lovell was nearly bankrupt. The university wanted answers. The press mocked him. Then on October 4, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.…