Michael Hoskin (1930–2021)

Abstract

Michael Hoskin, who founded this journal and edited it for 45 years, died at his home in Cambridge, England, on December 5, 2021. Some years ago, Michael, wanting to lighten our load on that day in the future when we would eventually lose him, and wanting, too, for things to be set down correctly in his beloved journal, sent us notes for his own obituary. We have drawn upon them substantially but have added to them. Michael Hoskin was born in south London on February 27, 1930, the only child of a tax official and a schoolteacher. He attended a Catholic grammar school in west London, surviving first the bombs of the blitz and later the flying bombs and rockets. The school focused on the Classics and so Hoskin spent his last two years there exclusively in the study of Latin and Greek. After leaving school he was for 5 years a student at London University, earning a BA and MA in pure mathematics. In 1952 he transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he wrote his doctoral thesis in algebraic geometry. He then spent a year in military research before returning to Cambridge in 1956 as Research Fellow at Jesus College. In the same year he married Jean Margaret (Jane) Small, with whom he was to have five children. The award of the Fellowship should have reassured Hoskin of his abilities as a pure mathematician, but he was unable to throw off his sense of inferiority to his sole fellow doctoral-student, one Michael Atiyah. Atiyah’s recent obituarist has described him as England’s finest mathematician since Newton, but no one warned Hoskin that Atiyah was out of the ordinary. Taking therefore a gloomy view of his own mathematical ability, Hoskin began to cast around for a career outside mathematics. He chanced upon an advertisement from Leicester University for an inaugural lectureship in a subject called history of science. Although the rival candidates each had a PhD in history of science, it was Hoskin who was appointed. A frantic 3 months of preparation for his lectures were to follow. Two years later, Rupert Hall suddenly resigned his lectureship in history of science in Cambridge. Hoskin applied and, although there was a distinguished field, he was appointed. He was to spend the rest of his career in Cambridge. At first his only colleague was a philosopher of science and they taught a joint course, with Hoskin single-handedly covering the whole of the history of science and medicine. Furthermore, on arrival in Cambridge he had been asked by the philosopher Richard Braithwaite to take over supervision of a doctoral student named Derek T. Whiteside, who was working in 17th-century mathematics. After Whiteside completed his dissertation he then proposed a publishing project of the first magnitude, a multi-volume edition of Newton’s mathematical papers. Cambridge University Press agreed to take the project on, but only if Hoskin would guarantee it by being formally involved in seeing the work through the press. The 1077318 JHA0010.1177/00218286221077318Journal for the History of AstronomyObituary research-article2022