Sir Patrick Moore

Newswhip.com

Sunday

The sad news today was that Sir Patrick Moore, of "The Sky at Night" fame, died.

See:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10525469

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/09/sir-patrick-moore



He was a larger than life figure and I once had the great pleasure of attending a lecture he gave at Queen Mary College London.



The lecture, in the late 1970's (the site was less expansive than that shown above) was ostensibly part of an undergraduate Astronomy course. However, the word that Patrick Moore would be giving a lecture to the course, was widely known. The lecture had been scheduled to be put on in the largest lecture theatre in the college - by chance I believe - but even this huge room was not big enough to cater for the 1000+ students who turned up, skipping their normal lectures just to hear the legendary man!! This included me!

Determined that all who wanted to hear his talk would not be denied, he decided to move to the main college hall - an ex-theatre on Mile End Road. With assistance from an eager band of astronomy student helpers, everyone trooped over to the new venue. Then, horror of horrors, when setting up the projector he dropped his carousel of slides!!!

Un-phased, he gave us all the choice of abandoning the talk, going ahead without visual aids, or waiting for him to re-sort his slides. The vote was overwhelming - everyone wanted to wait while he set things up again properly.

The talk was fantastic and afterwards he remained in the hall for ages answering questions and cultivating the latent enthusiasm for astronomy in the audience. 

He will be missed.