John David North (1934-2008)

摘要

With the passing of John David North on 31 October 2008, the history of astronomy community lost one of its few great contemporary generalists. John's expertise ranged from Chaucer to Thomas Harriot's sunspots, and from the Gregorian calendar reform to Einstein's cosmology. He was particularly fond of astrolabes, medieval astronomical tables, and horoscopic methods. His most recent synthesis, Cosmos, a 900-page volume, deals with the sweep of astronomy from Stonehenge to the space age. A pair of anthologies of his articles and reviews published in 1989 (Stars, minds and fate, and The universal frame) gives only a hint of the fact that John was a prolific and wide-ranging reviewer for the Times literary supplement beginning in the days when the reviews there were anonymous. And for decades he was one the most reliable reviewers for the Journal for the history of astronomy.