ABSTRACT
An attempt to elucidate the history of the development of radio astronomy in its different aspects and using different sources seems to be quite relevant and useful. But unfortunately, in spite of sincere aspirations, I have not been able to write a paper which would correspond to the requirements of the editor of the present book. h The main reason is evidently that I am not an astronomer but a physicist both by education and by the experience of many years. Astronomy became for me a 'part-time job'. While in my personal life it was a rather accidental occurrence, from a more general point of view it happened on the wave of the truly great process of the transformation of astronomy from being optical to 'all-wave'. In the course of this process, many physicists, radio engineers, and other professionals took an interest in astronomical methods and problems and 'came' to astronomy (often irritating professional astronomers by their poor knowledge of classical astronomy and even of the proper terminology). Some of the neophytes became real astronomers, while others did not give up their previous specialities and devoted only part of their time to astronomy. It is actually not even a question of time but rather of the style of the work. A physicist, say, may devote all his/her efforts to astrophysics (which is now rather difficult to separate from physics proper) but if s(he) insufficiently commands purely astronomical material, s(he) nevertheless does not become a real astronomer, who must know well the astronomical classics and literature, observational methods and results, etc. In a word, I am not a professional astronomer and, therefore, my astronomical works are somewhat fragmentary and episodic except, possibly, those connected with cosmic-ray astrophysics.
