Wayne Orchiston

Wayne Orchiston is a New Zealand born Australian astronomer.

Early life
Orchiston was born in New Zealand and lived the early part of his life in New Zealand. He moved to Australia for his higher education. He has also lived in the United States.

Career
After completing secondary school in New Zealand, Orchiston worked as a Technical Assistant in radio astronomy at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation while completing a First Class Honours BA in prehistory as a part-time student at the University of Sydney. He remained at University of Sydney for his PhD, studying New Zealand's environmental prehistory. After completing post-doctoral work at the University of Melbourne, he spent time working in museums before returning to work in variable star astronomy.

He is currently the adjunct professor of astronomy in the Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland.

He is also the co-editor of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.

Awards and honours
Orchiston is the recipient of 2024's LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for Historical Astronomy. The prize is awarded every other year by the AAS Historical Astronomy Division to someone "who has significantly influenced the field of the history of astronomy by a career-long effort".

Books
His notable books include:


 * Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia Pacific Region
 * Eclipses, Transits and Comets of the Nineteenth Century
 * John Tebbutt: Rebuilding and Strengthening the Foundations of Australian Astronomy
 * Exploring the History of New Zealand Astronomy
 * Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy

Journals
, ResearchGate lists 698 publications, which have a total of 3,838 citations. Google Scholar estimates his h-index as 28, with his most-cited article being "Michell, Laplace and the origin of the black hole concept" (together with C Montgomery and I Whittingham) in the 2009 Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 12.