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1998 Doggett Prize Winner - Curtis A. Wilson

Curtis A. Wilson Awarded the 1998 LeRoy E. Doggett Prize

by Woodruff T. Sullivan, III (reprinted from HAD News #41)
Photo 2002, courtesy David H. DeVorkin

Professor Wilson is cited for his decades of rigorous and exemplary work in the history of 18th- and 19th-century celestial mechanics, for his editorship and original contributions to Volumes 2A and 2B of the General History of Astronomy, and for the generations of students he taught and inspired through the reading and study of the works of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton. Through it all, he has been a dedicated and selfless scholar, and serves as an example to us all.

Curtis Wilson spent most of his career teaching at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, starting in 1948 and retiring in 1988. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA in 1945 with a B.A. degree in History and received his M.A. degree (1947) and his PhD degree (1952) in History of Science from Columbia University.

Curtis Wilson died 24 August 2012.