Patrick Moore

Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore was born in Pinner in Middlesex, the child of a Captain and his wife. He was raised in East Grinstead and educated at home due to chronic health problems. He joined the British Astronomical Association at eleven years of age. When he was 14, his mentor at the observatory in East Grinstead was killed, and Moore was asked to run the observatory.

In 1941, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. In 1943, while Moore was training abroad, his fiancée was killed by a bomb in London. In 1944, he returned to England, and was posted as the navigator of a Vickers Wellington bomber in Cumbria. After the war, he taught school from 1945-1953. His first book, Guide to the Moon (later retitled Patrick Moore on the Moon), was published in 1953. He wrote and translated several books of astronomy and fiction, including the late 1970s series the Scott Saunders Space Adventure. In the 1957, he began a television show on the BBC network about astronomy, The Sky at Night, which aired monthly until his death in 2012 and made him the longest-serving TV presenter.

Moore was president of the British Astronomical Association, co-founder and president of the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA), author of over 70 books on astronomy. His specialty was Moon observation.