John Dobson (astronomer)

John Dobson (2002)

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 telescope , he had a decisive influence on the spread of inexpensive amateur telescopes.

Life

John Dobson was born in Beijing in 1915 and spent his childhood in China. His maternal grandfather was the founder of Peking University , his mother a musician, and his father a lecturer in zoology at Peking University. In 1927 the family went back to the United States and settled in San Francisco . Dobson's father worked as a teacher at Lowell High School there. Dobson began studying chemistry at Berkeley University , graduating in 1943.

At a young age, Dobson was an atheist . As he grew older he came to believe that the universe must be of divine origin. In 1940 he lived temporarily in a monastery , which he left to continue his studies. In 1944 he became a follower of the Ramakrishna order and lived as a monk in the Vedanta Monastery in San Francisco for the next 23 years .

During this time Dobson began to deal intensively with the structure of the universe. To learn more about it, he studied astronomy . Since he had vowed to live in poverty, he could not buy a finished telescope , but constructed instruments from the simplest means. He ground the glasses from bottle bottoms to telescope mirrors and related cardboard tubes that were used on construction sites as tubes . His devices did not have a conventional mount , but were mounted on a box made of plywood.

Dobson's astronomical activities met with increasing disapproval from the Order. He sometimes had to make his contact with the outside world by letter in encrypted form, "camouflaging" telescopes as geraniums and flower pots. Ultimately, he had to decide whether to continue to belong to the order or to build telescopes. Dobson opted for the latter and resigned in 1967.

In the same year he co-founded the "Sidewalk Astronomers" ("walkway astronomers") in San Francisco. This group of amateur astronomers simply set their telescopes on the sidewalks of the city and offered every passer-by to peek through. The Sidewalk Astronomers are now an organization with worldwide membership. Its aim is to bring astronomy closer to a broader public.

Dobson's first telescopes still had optical inadequacies due to their primitive components and did not have a high resolution. Over time, he and other amateur astronomers improved the design. The principle of the Dobsonian mount represents a possibility to manufacture even large mirror telescopes inexpensively. Dobsonian telescopes are relatively easy to build yourself, are easy to transport and can be set up at the observation site in just a few simple steps. These properties led to this type of telescope being widely used today.

Dobson used his notoriety, gained through appearances on US television and at telescope meetings around the world, to spread unorthodox views on cosmology . He was a strict opponent of the now recognized big bang theory. In his opinion, it is illogical that anything can arise from “nothing”. In addition, scientists would have to resort to unproven theories such as dark matter . New physics would simply be invented to support the Big Bang theory. Dobson represented his own cosmological model, according to which the universe recycle itself . He referred to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity , according to which energy and matter are equivalent, as well as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle . According to Dobson, the universe expands forever, with hydrogen atoms being renewed. The entropy remains constant. Critics consider this model to be unscientific.

A few years before his death, his health had deteriorated from a stroke . He died at the age of 98 on January 15, 2014 while hospitalized in Burbank, California .

The asteroid (18024) Dobson is named after him.

literature

• How and Why to Make a User-Friendly Sidewalk Telescope , John Dobson and Norman Sperling, 1991, ISBN 0-913399-64-7 .

Web links

• Website of the Sidewalk Astronomers (English)
• "John Dobson - A Brief Biography" on the website of the Sidewalk Astronomers (English)
• Videos by John Dobson on the Sidewalk Astronomers website
• Lecture by John Dobson visiting AME 2006 (video, English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Elaine Woo: John Dobson dies at 98; former monk developed easy-to-make telescope. In: Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2014 (accessed January 20, 2014).