Marvin Harold Hewitt (March 24, 1922 – March 31, 1991) was an American

impostor An impostor (also spelled imposter) is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise, deceiving others by knowingly falsifying one or more aspects of their identity. This is in contrast to someone that honestly belie ...

who became, among other things, a university

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

professor. Hewitt was born in Philadelphia on March 24, 1922, the son of Samuel Hewitt, a police officer who was killed in 1947. Hewitt was a

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

drop-out with no qualifications who wanted to become an academic. He always used names and identities of real-life people in his impostures. He later claimed that he had a "compulsion to teach". Hewitt's first imposture began in 1945 when he selected a famous name from a list of university teachers and used it to apply for a position of an aerodynamic engineer. However, the name was too recognizable and he was soon exposed. The next identity Hewitt adopted was that of Julius Ashkin, a physics professor. He applied and was accepted first into a pharmacological college in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

and the next year into teacher's college in

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. When he began to gain academic fame, the real Ashkin wrote him to suggest that he stop. Hewitt proceeded to adopt the persona of George Hewitt, former chief researcher of

Radio Corporation of America RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

. When he was found out, he switched to that of philosophy professor Clifford Berry. In 1954, Hewitt was on his fifth teaching job as Dr. Kenneth Yates, an associate professor of physics at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire, United States. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant coll ...

. At that stage two other colleges had discovered that his credentials were false when they noticed that the real Kenneth Yates was currently working for an oil company. They had only removed him from the faculty and the university authorities had decided to let him leave quietly when the details leaked out. Hewitt died on March 31, 1991, aged 69.

References

*
The Compulsion.

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. March 15, 1954
Honest career for Ph(ony)D: brilliant hoaxer Marvin Hewitt becomes a respected engineer.

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. January 21, 1957, pp. 57–82. 1922 births 1991 deaths Impostors American people who fabricated academic degrees {{US-bio-stub