Ian Ridpath

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Ian (William) Ridpath (born 1 May 1947, Ilford, Essex) is an English science writer and broadcaster made famous for his investigation and explanation of the Rendlesham Forest Incident of December 1980.

He attended Beal Grammar School in Ilford where he wrote astronomy articles for the school magazine. Before entering publishing he was an assistant in the lunar research group at the University of London Observatory, Mill Hill. He now lives in Brentford, Middlesex.

He is editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy and Norton's Star Atlas, and author of observing guides such as The Monthly Sky Guide and the Collins Stars and Planets Guide (the latter two with charts by Wil Tirion). His other books include Star Tales, about the origins and mythology of the constellations. He was a major contributor to the Dorling Kindersley encyclopedia Universe. He is a former editor of the UK quarterly magazine Popular Astronomy.

In 1990 he won an award in The Aventis Prizes for Science Books (in the under-8 children's books category) for The Giant Book of Space.

His early books on the subject of extraterrestrial life and interstellar travel – Worlds Beyond (1975), Messages from the Stars (1978) and Life off Earth (1983) – led him to investigate UFOs. But he rapidly became a sceptic, a position reinforced by his findings about the Rendlesham case. He was one of the first to offer an explanation for the so-called Sirius Mystery^[1] involving the supposedly advanced astronomical knowledge of the Dogon people of Mali, west Africa.

He was a space expert for LBC Radio from the 1970s into the 1990s, and was also seen on BBC TV’s Breakfast Time programme in its early years. It was for Breakfast Time that he first investigated the Rendlesham Forest UFO case.

From 1993 to 1995 he was Race Director of the Polytechnic Marathon from Windsor to Chiswick, Britain’s oldest marathon race which traced its origins back to the 1908 Olympic Marathon. In that role, he was involved in a public controversy over the ownership of the Sporting Life marathon trophy, originally awarded to winners of the Polytechnic Marathon, which was claimed in 1994 by the London Marathon.^[2] The Polytechnic Marathon was last held in 1996.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Stars and Planets Guide. Collins (UK). ISBN 9780007251209. Princeton University Press (US). ISBN 9780691135564.
Monthly Sky Guide. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521684354.
Gem Stars. Collins. ISBN 9780007178582.
Times Universe. Times Books. ISBN 9780007169306.
Atlas of Stars and Planets. Philip’s. ISBN 9780540086108.
Star Tales. Lutterworth. ISBN 9780718826956.
Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy (ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199214938.
Norton’s Star Alas and Reference Handbook (ed.). Dutton. ISBN 9780131451643.