Hugh Harkins

Hugh, a historian and author, with a deep background in astro/geophysics, has published in excess of sixty books; non-fiction and fiction, as well as a number of novelettes, short stories and flash fiction, writing under his given name as well as utilising three different pseudonyms. A non-fiction specialist writer, he published his first non-fiction book in 1995, and penned his first Novel during 1996/97. He has also written for several international magazines, whilst his historical research work has been used as reference for many other projects ranging from the aviation industry, international news corporations, film media, museum exhibits to encyclopedia and the computer gaming industry. Hugh had joined the British Army straight from school at age seventeen, and, following three years’ service as an Infantry Soldier in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, he left the armed forces towards the mid-1990’s. His passion for writing led to a career writing predominantly about aeronautic, astronautic and military history subjects, as well as putting him through his college (English and history) and university education studies, which include the natural sciences - astrophysics, astrobiology and astronomy. He also has a deep background in astronautics and aeronautics – the latter field researching the aero-physics of aerodynamics and hypersonic flight. In recent years he has been involved in such areas of astrophysics and planetary science research as diverse as the search for near Earth Asteroids and Comets, Galaxy classification, analysing data from several instruments, including the Hubble Space Telescope, tracking exoplanet transits of extrasolar Stars and analyzing data from the NASA Wide Field Survey Explorer spacecraft in the search for celestial bodies, including Brown Dwarfs and the hypothesised Planet 9, beyond the orbit of Neptune out to the realm of the closest star system to our own Sun, Alpha Centauri. In the aeronautics and astronautics fields his research areas have included fifth generation aviation technologies for 21st century aircraft whilst continuing to research aviation and aeronautics areas ranging from World War 1 through the Cold War that defined the second half of the 20th century. Hugh is a member of the Institute of Physics (incorporating the IOP Scotland) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2017. He currently resides in his native Scotland.