John Dobson (amateur astronomer)
John Lowry Dobson ( born September 14, 1915 in Beijing, Republic of China, † January 15, 2014 in Burbank, California, United States) was an American amateur astronomer. With his concept of the so-called Dobsonian he had a major influence on the spread of cheap amateur telescopes.
Life
John Dobson was born in 1915 in Beijing and spent his childhood in China. His maternal grandfather was the founder of Peking University, his mother was a musician, his father a lecturer in zoology at the Peking University. 1927 the family went back to the U.S. and settled in San Francisco. Dobson's father worked as a teacher at the local Lowell High School. Dobson began studying chemistry at the University of Berkeley, from which he graduated in 1943.
At a young age Dobson was an atheist. With age, he came to the belief that the universe must be of divine origin. In 1940 he was living temporarily in a monastery, but he left again to continue his studies. In 1944, he became a follower of the Ramakrishna Order, and lived for the next 23 years as a monk in the Vedanta monastery in San Francisco.
During this time, Dobson began to deal intensively with the structure of the universe. To learn more about it, he occupied himself with astronomy. Since he had vowed to live in poverty, he could not buy a ready-made telescope, but constructed instruments from the simplest of means. So he cut the glass bottoms of bottles to telescope mirrors and related cardboard tubes that were incurred on construction sites, as a tube. His devices had no conventional mount, but were movable mounted on a box of plywood.
Dobson's astronomical activities came increasingly to disapproval of the Order. His epistolary contact with the outside world, he had to sometimes make in encrypted form, said he was " camouflaged " telescopes as geraniums and flower pots. Finally, he had to decide whether to continue to belong to the Order or wanted to build telescopes. Dobson chose the latter and came out in 1967.
In the same year he was co-founder of " Sidewalk Astronomers " ( " sidewalk astronomer " ) in San Francisco. This group of amateur astronomers put their telescopes easily on the sidewalks of the city and offered to any passers-by, pass throw a glance. The Sidewalk Astronomers are now an organization with a worldwide membership. Your goal is closer to astronomy to the public.
Dobsonian telescopes first reported due to their primitive components nor optical shortcomings and had no high resolving power. Over time, he and other amateur astronomers improved the design. The principle of the Dobsonian mount is a way to make even large reflecting telescopes inexpensive. Dobsonian telescopes can relatively easily even be built, are easy to transport and can be set up at the observation site with a few simple steps. Of these properties is that this type of telescope is widely used today.
Dobson used his acquired through appearances on U.S. television and telescope meeting worldwide notoriety to spread unorthodox views on cosmology. He was a staunch opponent of the Big Bang theory recognized today. In his view, it is illogical that something could " nothing" arise from the. In addition, scientists would have to take refuge in unproven theories, such as the dark matter. It would just invented a new physics to support the Big Bang theory. Dobson took his own cosmological model in which the universe itself recycle. He referred to it on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, according to which matter and energy are equivalent, and on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. According to Dobson, the universe will expand forever, with renewed hydrogen atoms. The entropy remains constant. Critics of this model for not scientifically valid.
Some years before his death his health had deteriorated due to a stroke. He died 98 years old on January 15, 2014 during a hospital stay in Burbank, California.