Obituary: J. Beverley Oke (1928–2004)

Optical telescopes have very long useful lives, but they are only as good as the light-detecting instruments at their focal planes — which, in turn, are only as good as their designers. J. Beverley (Bev) Oke, who died on 2 March 2004 at the age of 75, devoted most of his scientific career to devising and building a succession of such instruments — photometers, cameras and spectrographs that have helped, in particular, to keep the 50-year-old Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory, California, at the forefront of astronomical research