Draft:Michael Hoskin

Michael Anthony Hoskin (27 February 1930 – 5 December 2021) was a British historian of science. He founded the journals History of Science (with Alistair Crombie) and Journal for the History of Astronomy, and wrote extensively on the Herschel family. After retiring from the University of Cambridge, where he taught for three decades, he did pioneering archaeoastronomy fieldwork in the western Mediterranean basin. The asteroid 12223 Hoskin and Centro Solar Michael Hoskin (an archaeological centre in Antequera, Spain) are both named after him.

Biography
Born in south London, Michael Hoskin was the only child of a tax official and a schoolteacher. During World War II he learned classics at a Catholic grammar school in west London. He spent five years at the University of London, receiving a BA and an MA in pure mathematics, before transferring to Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1952, where he earned a doctorate in algebraic geometry. After one year in military research he returned to Cambridge in 1956 with a research fellowship at Jesus College. From 1957 to 1959 he taught history of science at the University of Leicester, before returning to Cambridge to replace Rupert Hall.

Awards and honours

 * 2004 LeRoy E. Doggett Prize from the American Astronomical Society
 * 2007 Honorary Fellow, Royal Astronomical Society
 * 2015 Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts from the Government of Spain
 * 2020 Agnes Mary Clerke Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society

Selected publications

 * William Herschel: Pioneer of Sidereal Astronomy (1959)
 * William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens (1963)
 * The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy (1997, general editor), later revised and re-published as The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy (1999)
 * Tombs, Temples and Orientations: A New Perspective on Mediterranean Prehistory (2001)
 * The Herschel Partnership: As Viewed by Caroline (2002)
 * William and Caroline Herschel: Pioneers in Late Eighteenth-Century Astronomy (2013)
 * Caroline Herschel: Priestess of the New Heavens (2013)