Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2010 02:55 am Post subject: Keep looking up.
Quote:
Foley Arthur "Jack" Horkheimer, the award-winning astronomer who entertained millions as the host of the PBS show "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer," died on Aug. 20 of a respiratory ailment. He was 72.
Born in Randolph, Wis., Horkheimer was always in poor health. As a child, he suffered from severe allergies, depression and numerous phobias, including acrophobia (fear of heights) and agoraphobia (fear of crowds). Throughout his life, he also battled bronchiectasis, a degenerative lung disease.
Horkheimer's father, the longtime mayor of Randolph, reportedly urged him to be an athlete, and his mother wanted him to become a priest. He preferred to please people, working as a disc jockey, a jazz organist, a playwright and a nightclub entertainer. After dropping out of Marquette University and the Honolulu School of Fine Arts in Hawaii, Horkheimer attended Purdue for six years, where he studied drama and worked as a writer/producer in Purdue's Repertory Theatre. Once Horkheimer finally earned a bachelor's degree, he moved to South Florida because the warm, humid air helped his inflamed lungs.
While Horkheimer never took an accredited astronomy course, his future would soon be written in the stars. A meeting with Art Smith, chief of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society, led to a job running the brand new Space Transit Planetarium (also known as The Miami Planetarium). With a $150,000 Spitz projector at his disposal, Horkheimer created multimedia stargazing shows that were a memorable mix of fact and fantasy. He called it "cosmic theater."
"A planetarium is not for scientists. It's not for the Ph.D.'s. It's for the people," Horkheimer said in a 1982 profile in The Miami Herald. "A planetarium is supposed to mediate between the scientists and the public. It's to teach, to tantalize. Real astronomers aren't supposed to be running planetariums. It's living death for them. They're supposed to be researching."
The Blog of Death http://www.blogofdeath.com/ last visited (Mon Aug 30 2010 21:54:59 GMT-0500 (CST)) _________________ David Traver
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