Richard John Davis, OBE, FRAS (28 June 1949 – 2 May 2016) was a radio astronomer for the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.
[3] He won a scholarship to attend Downing College at the University of Cambridge in 1968, where he studied the natural sciences, focusing on theoretical physics,[3] for his undergraduate degree.
At the same time he worked with Bernard Lovell and Ralph Spencer on observations of red dwarf flare stars using the Lovell Telescope (then the Mark I) and the Defford 25 metres (82 ft) telescope as an interferometer, which led to an unambiguous detection of YZ Canis Minoris at radio frequencies.
[4] He developed a 5 GHz broadband interferometer using the Lovell and Mark II telescopes, with his then-student Steve Padin, detecting radio emission from symbiotic stars and novae.
[4] Davis studied the cosmic microwave background with the Very Small Array and the Planck satellite.