John Dobson

John Dobson  was born on September 14, 1915 in Beijing, China. He moved to San Francisco in 1927. Dobson became interested in the workings of the universe. He earned a masters degree in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1943. Dobson attended a lecture by a Vedantan swami. In the same year Dobson joined the Vendantan Society monastery in San Francisco. He became a monk of the Ramakrishna order. At the monastery he was expected to show that astronomy and the teachings of the Vedanta were compatible. There Dobson began to build telescopes. He corresponded with those outside of the monastery who were also interested in astronomy. After a while Dobson was given the choice of either to stop building telescopes or leave the monastery. While Dobson chose to remain at the monastery he was expelled in 1967 after being falsely accused of rejecting the swami's teachings. 
Dobson was an amateur astronomer best known for his Dobsonian Telescope. The Dobsonian Telescope is a portable, low cost Newtonian reflector telescope. It's invention was revolutionary because it allowed amateur astronomers to build their own large telescopes. He was also co-founder of the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers; an amateur astronomical group. 
Later Dobson spoke at a Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. He spent two months each year there teaching telescope and cosmology classes. Dobson did not support the Big Bang model. Instead he believed in a "recycling" steady state model where the universe is expanding outward forever but also recycles through quantum tunneling. Dobson expressed his opinions in his essay "Origins". In 2004 the Crater Lake Institute presented Dobson with the Annual Award for Excellence in Public Service for introducing sidewalk astronomy to national parks. He was also noted in the Smithsonian magazine for his accomplishments. John Dobson died on January 15, 2014 in Burbank, California.