George Alcock

George Eric Deacon Alcock, MBE (28 August 1912 – 15 December 2000) was an English amateur astronomer. He was one of the most successful visual discoverers of novae and comets.

Born in Peterborough, Northamptonshire, the son of a railway worker, George’s interest in astronomy was sparked by his first encounter with the solar eclipse of 8 April 1921. His interest evolved into the observation of meteors and meteor showers, resulting to him joining the Meteor Section of the British Astronomical Association on 27 March 1935, while training to be a teacher. He balanced his pursuit of astronomy with his full-time teaching career, moving between temporary posts before obtaining a full-time position in 1937. While serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he saw action in North Africa and Italy, and was court-martialed three times. In 1953, he started his search for comets and in 1955 for novae. His technique involved memorization of the patterns of thousands of stars, so that he would visually recognize any intruder.

In 1959, he discovered comet C/1959 Q1 — the first comet discovered in Britain since 1894. After five days, he discovered another, named C/1959 Q2. He discovered two more comets in 1963 (C/1963 F1) and 1965 (C/1965 S2). His first Nova was Delphini 1967 (HR Delphini), which turned out to have an unusual light-curve. He discovered two more novae, LV Vul (in 1968) and V368 Sct (in 1970). He found his fifth and final comet in 1983: C/1983 H1 (IRAS-Araki-Alcock). In 1991 he found the nova V838 Her.