Gerald Hawkins

Gerald Stanley Hawkins ( born April 20, 1928 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, † 26 May 2003 in Woodville (Virginia)) was a British astronomer and historian of astronomy ( archaeoastronomy ), known for his book "Stonehenge Decoded " by 1965.

Life

Hawkins studied physics and mathematics at the University of Nottingham ( completion 1949) and doctorate ( after work on the Jodrell Bank Radio Observatory ) in 1952 in radio astronomy at Bernard Lovell at the University of Manchester. After that, he was involved some time to secret rocket research Ferranti Corporation before he went to the USA in 1955 to operate with radar meteor research (Harvard Radio Meteor Project ). In 1957 he became professor of astronomy at Boston University, lectured at Harvard and was also an astronomer at the Harvard - Smithsonian Observatory ( and to the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories in Bedford ( Massachusetts)). There he was, until 1969, a time as Chairman of the Department of Astronomy. In 1989, he went into retirement. 1969 and 1971 he was Dean ( Dean ) of Dickinson College in Carlisle (Pennsylvania). For his work in observational astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory he received from the University of Manchester a Ph. D.. Recently, he lived on his farm in Rappahannock in Virginia near Washington.

In 1965, he was in Boston the Shell Award for his work as a writer. He received awards from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington DC and science adviser to the U.S. Information Agency.

He was married twice. From the first, divorced marriage to Dorothy Willacy Barnes he had two daughters. In 1979 he married the writer Julia M. Dobson, with which he the book Stonehenge, Earth and Sky completed at his death.

Work

As an astronomer, he dealt only radio astronomy, among others, meteors, meteorite impacts ( and they left behind tektites ) and the steady-state theory of cosmology.

In the 1960s, he examined the astronomical alignment of Stonehenge and other monuments of the megalithic culture with early IBM computers ( an IBM 740 of the Harvard - Smithsonian, where he in 1961 his calculations performed ), which he in 1965 with JB White wrote a famous book and 1963 an article " Stonehenge Decoded " in the journal Nature published. He looked as Stonehenge Stone Age " calculating machine " for the prediction of important constellations of sun and moon and said numerous lines of sight within the monument to assign. In the Aubrey holes he saw a computer for calculation of lunar eclipses. He joined with his astronomical interpretations of Stone Age monuments in the footsteps of previous studies of the Scottish professor of Engineering Alexander Thom (1894-1985) from the 1950s and the astronomer Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer from the period around 1901. From the beginning, his theory of archaeologists criticized hard but supported by other astronomers as Fred Hoyle ( this also wrote in 1977 a book on Stonehenge ). So called Stonehenge excavator Richard JC Atkinson, the book " tendentious, arrogant, sloppy and unconvincing ". In 1965 he examined in a similar manner specified by him the Scottish Stonehenge megalithic sites in Callanish on the Outer Hebrides. Hawkins also examined other archäoastronomische sites such as the Egyptian temple of Amun at Karnak and the Nazca Lines in Peru, what 1969, a report for the Smithsonian Institute Ancient Lines in the Peruvian Desert appeared (1973, he examined the lines again and found 20% showed a astronomical alignment ). He tells it in his second book, Beyond Stonehenge of 1973 Next he dealt with archäoastronomischen sites in Mexico and the Maya and also to his death with Stonehenge -. Example, he came in the CBS TV movie Mystery of Stonehenge to speak. In the 1990s, he also set up a theory about crop circles that were indeed his view of human hand, but scaling ratios of which were as in musical harmony.

Writings

  • With John B. White: Stonehenge Decoded, Doubleday 1965
  • The Development of Radio Astronomy, Washington 1958
  • Beyond Stonehenge, Hutchinson 1973
  • Splendor in the sky, Harper 1961, 1969
  • The Moon tonight, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1967
  • Life of a star, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1965
  • The sun and its planets, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1964
  • The physics and astronomy of meteors, comets and meteorites, McGraw Hill 1964
  • Richard Southworth: Orbital elements of meteors, Smithsonian, Washington, 1961
  • Mind Steps to the cosmos, Harper and Row 1983
  • Tony Morrison: Pathway to the Gods - the mystery of the Andes lines, Harper and Row 1978
May 26 Harvard University Rappahannock County, Virginia Richard J. C. Atkinson Astrophysics Data System
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