* Frank Drake - The SETI Project and the Drake Equation (4 books)
FRANK D. DRAKE (1930–2022) was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist. Often called the father of SETI — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — Drake made the first attempt to detect radio transmissions from life beyond Earth in 1960.
Drake began his career as a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, studying the planets of the Solar System and later pulsars. He conducted key measurements that revealed the presence of a Jovian ionosphere and magnetosphere, and observed the atmosphere of Venus. Drake expanded his interests to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, beginning with Project OZMA in 1960, the first organized search for radio signals from worlds beyond our own. He developed the Drake Equation, which attempted estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be detectable in the Milky Way, and has been described as the "second most-famous equation in science", after E=mc2.
In the early 1970s, he co-designed (with astronomer Carl Sagan) the plaques, bearing pictorial messages to any beings that might intercept them, carried aboard NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 probes. In 1974, he led the composition of the Arecibo message, a radio transmission conveying astronomical and biological information about Earth that was beamed to the star cluster M13. Drake later served as technical director, with Sagan and Ann Druyan, in the development of the Voyager Golden Record (see my accompanying torrent), a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc that compiled sights and sounds of Earth and humanity and that was launched onboard the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes in 1977, along with a ceramic phonograph cartridge with which to play it.
In 1984, Drake moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz. He went on to direct the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, a non-profit research centre in Mountain View, California, dedicated to all aspects of the Drake Equation, and to chair its board of trustees. He retired from teaching in 1996 but remained emeritus professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC, and continued to serve on the SETI Institute's board of trustees.
IS ANYONE OUT THERE? (1992) is Drake's autobiographical chronicle of one man's dedication to pioneering and legitimizing a new field of study — the science of interstellar contact. As Drake states in the preface, "This book is the behind-the-scenes story of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as I have lived it, with all my reminiscences and impressions of the events, and especially the people involved. But it is not simply a chronicle of an interesting chapter in the history of science. I am telling my story because I see a pressing need to prepare thinking adults for the outcome of the present search activity — the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization." Under realistic estimates, he said in a recent interview, a search for extraterrestrial life would need to look at 10 million stars (there are at least 100 billion in the galaxy). So far, only a few thousand have been examined.
Frank Drake died at his home in Aptos, California, on September 2, 2022.
The following books, and 100 unlisted academic papers and other contributions, are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:
* Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for ET [with Sobel] (Delacorte, 1992) * "Foundations of the Voyager Record," in Murmurs of Earth (1979) – ePUB * SETI Science Working Group Report, NASA TP 2244 [ed.] (1984)
== Also Included ==
* The Drake Equation: Estimating the Prevalence of Extraterrestrial Life through the Ages (Cambridge, 2015). Vakoch & Dowd, eds.
