Simon Mitton (born 18 December 1946) is a British astronomer and writer. He is based at

St Edmund's College, Cambridge St Edmund's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. Founded in 1896, it is the second-oldest of the four Cambridge colleges oriented to mature students, which accept only students reading for postgraduate deg ...

. He has written numerous astronomical works. The most well known of these is his biography of fellow Cambridge astronomer

Fred Hoyle Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on other sc ...

Career

Mitton was elected to Council of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

2012–2016, and chairman of the RAS library committee. He is a College Fellow of the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge. He is a founder director of Total Astronomy Limited, a company based in Cambridge that provides media services for the astronomy and space industries. Earlier in his career, while employed by the Cambridge University Press, he was the editor in question when Stephen Hawking famously put the success of his bestseller ''A Brief History of Time'' down to advice from his editor that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved. As a result, the book included only a single equation, E = mc2.Review of 'The Quantum Universe: Everything that can happen does happen.' by Brian Cox and

Jeff Forshaw Jeffrey Robert Forshaw (born 1968) is a British particle physicist with a special interest in quantum chromodynamics (QCD): the study of the behaviour of subatomic particles, using data from the HERA particle accelerator, Tevatron particle ac ...

. annah Devlin, Science Correspondent, ''The Times'', October 31, 2011/ref> Jointly with his wife

Jacqueline Mitton Jacqueline Mitton (née Pardoe, born 1948) is a British astronomer, writer, and media consultant who lives and works in Cambridge, UK. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. She has served as Public Rela ...

, he occasionally gives astronomy lectures on cruise ships.

Education

Mitton studied physics and astrophysics. His undergraduate studies were at the Clarendon Laboratory and

Trinity College, Oxford (That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody) , named_for = The Holy Trinity , established = , sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge , president = Dame Hilary Boulding , location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH , coordinates ...

. For his doctoral research in high-energy astrophysics, he studied at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is name ...

, Cambridge, under Nobel Laureate Sir

Martin Ryle Sir Martin Ryle (27 September 1918 – 14 October 1984) was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems (see e.g. aperture synthesis) and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sour ...

FRS. His postdoctoral career started under Sir

FRS at the

Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge The Institute of Astronomy (IoA) is the largest of the three astronomy departments in the University of Cambridge, and one of the largest astronomy sites in the United Kingdom. Around 180 academics, postdocs, visitors and assistant staff work a ...

Research

Recently his principal research project has been in the history of astronomy, now his academic field. He has completed a large biography of the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), published in April 2005, and reissued in 2011.

Honours

Awards * Fellow,

(1973) * Fifth Champness Lecturer, Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers (1975) * 35th Barringer Lecturer,

University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...

(March 2009) Named after him *

Asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the Solar System#Inner solar system, inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic o ...

4027 Mitton (Awarded jointly with Jacqueline Mitton)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitton, Simon 20th-century British astronomers British science writers Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge Alumni of St Edmund's College, Cambridge Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford 1946 births Living people Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers