Letter: Sam Okoye in action for radio astronomy

From Richard Schilizzi

I would like to add a footnote to your excellent article on the life and legacy of Sam Okoye (A&G 2020 5.28).

In 1979, Sam participated in the World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC-79) in Geneva, one of the series of intergovernmental conferences organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) from time to time. WARC-79 was the first one in 20 years to examine and completely modify the regulations that govern the use of the radio spectrum, in order to meet the new challenges of rapidly changing radio technology and to provide a better sharing of spectrum and orbit resources among developed and developing countries. Radio astronomy was, and is, one of the radio services recognized by the ITU.

Sam was there, together with Prof. Govind Swarup, the father of the Ooty Radio telescope and initiator of the Giant Equatorial Radio Telescope proposal mentioned in your article, to fight for a shared allocation in the 322–328.6 MHz band to radio astronomy. (Sadly, Prof. Swarup died recently.) I was also at the meeting as a member of the Netherlands delegation representing the views of the Dutch radio astronomy community.

This frequency band was already in use by NATO and others and they were opposed to any sharing with radio astronomy. Feelings were running sufficiently high that I was instructed by the Netherlands delegation leader, a civil servant, not to talk to either Okoye or Swarup (which I ignored). However, at a plenary meeting, Sam was given the floor and, dressed in his colourful regalia (as shown in your article), made an impassioned speech about how this particular frequency band was essential to future radio astronomy aspirations in the developing nations and for VLBI with European countries. The NATO opposition folded after this and the 325 MHz band remains a radio astronomy allocation in many parts of the world to this day.