John Dobson

John Lowry Dobson (14 September 1915 – 15 January 2014) was an American amateur astronomer and is best known for the Dobsonian telescope, a portable, low-cost Newtonian reflector telescope. He was also known for his efforts to promote awareness of astronomy (and his unorthodox views of physical cosmology) through public lectures including his performances of "sidewalk astronomy". Dobson was also the co-founder of the amateur astronomical group, the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. Biography Dobson was born to Methodist missionary parents in China, but moved with his family back to the U.S. as a young child. He was a “belligerent atheist” as a young man. After earning a masters in chemistry, he encountered a teacher of a Vedanta monastic order, which seeks to integrate Veda-based religious precepts with rational inquiry, and joined the order, where he served as a Vedantan monk for 23 years. After leaving the order (in part because the time he surreptitiously dedicated to building telescopes did not meet the approval of the leader of the order's San Francisco monastery) he became an itinerant popularizer of amateur astronomy and sidewalk astronomy. In his later life, Dobson resumed regular association with a branch of the Vedanta order in southern California, but continued to dedicate most of his time to promoting public astronomy. Early life and education Dobson was born in Beijing, China. His maternal grandfather was the missionary Hiram Harrison Lowry, his mother was a musician, and his father taught zoology at a university. He and his parents moved to San Francisco, California in 1927. His father accepted a teaching position at Lowell High School and taught there until the 1950s. Dobson spent 23 years in a monastery, after which he became more active in promoting astronomy. As a teen, Dobson became a "belligerent" atheist. He described his state of mind at that time: "I could see that these two notions cannot arise in the same being: 'do unto others as you would that they do unto you' and 'if you're not a good boy, it's into hell for keeps.' ... They must be spoofing us. So I became an atheist – a belligerent atheist. If anybody started a conversation about the subject, I was a belligerent atheist."