Relativistic Gravity and Binary Radio Pulsars

Following a summary of the basic principles of pulsar timing, we present a review of recent results from timing observations of relativistic binary pulsars. In particular, we summarize the status of timing observations of the much celebrated original binary pulsar PSR B1913+16, draw attention to the recent confirmation of strong evidence for geodetic precession in this system, review the recent measurement of multiple post-Keplerian binary parameters for PSR B1534+12, and describe the Parkes Multibeam survey, a major survey of the Galactic Plane which promises to discover new relativistic binary pulsar systems.Comment: 12 pages, 3 EPS figures, proceedings of 8th Canadian Conference on General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics, held June 1999, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canad