When American-born pioneer of radio astronomy Grote Reber died in Tasmania in 2002, his ashes were separated into compact steel rectangular boxes and hand delivered to locations across the globe.

The urn boxes were taken to major radio telescope observatories, universities and to four locations in Australia, including a cemetery in Bothwell, a rural town in middle Tasmania where Reber had lived.

Reber is globally recognised for building the first "big dish" parabolic radio antenna, in his backyard in Illinois in 1937, which he used to make the first true radio map of the sky.

In 1954 he moved to Tasmania where he spent more than half his life, living in Bothwell in central Tasmania and working in the state's south.

His collaborative research on radio emissions from space proved pivotal

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