Rodney Deane Davies CBE FRS (8 January 1930 – 8 November 2015) was a Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester.

Davies was born on 8 January 1930[1] into a family of farmers in Balaklava, a village north of Adelaide, South Australia.

They had four children: Rosalyn, Claire, Stewart and Warwick (who predeceased him), and eleven grandchildren:[1] Luke, Josh (m. Cat), Dom, Hannah, Nyasha, Laura, Eleanor, Hettie, Annie, Leo, and Jemima.

[2] When he was 23 he sent an airmail letter to Bernard Lovell, a friend of his then-boss Joe Pawsey, asking for a position at Jodrell Bank Observatory,[1] and he was subsequently appointed Assistant Lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1953.

[12] He was best known for his work measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background emission,[1] providing upper limits on the CMB anisotropies,[5][13][14][15][16] which began with observations on cold winter nights at Jodrell Bank Observatory in the late 1970s, before relocating his telescopes 2,400 metres (7,900 ft) up the mountain on Tenerife in the early 1980s to take advantage of the clearer atmosphere at that location.

[19] He continued his research over 18 years after his retirement, with his final paper due to be published several months after his death.