Michael Hoskin: The professor of the Antequera dolmens

The Centro Solar Michael Hoskin in Antequera is named after the eminent British scientist and professor of History of Science at the University of Cambridge whose research led Antequera's dolmens to be declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2016.

Born in London on 27 February 1930, Hoskin began his academic career by studying Latin and Greek and went on to study Mathematics at the Universities of London and Cambridge where he read his doctoral thesis.

The scientist would later spend more than a decade researching the orientations of the megalithic constructions found in the Mediterranean arch including the dolmens of Antequera.

He analysed more than 3,000 sites and determined that the vast majority of them were oriented to the rising of the sun at the equinoxes and solstices.

However, he discovered that there were two exceptions to this rule and both were in Antequera, where the megaliths are directed towards the landscape and not towards the sun.

Hoskin's measurements determined that the Menga dolmen faces the Peña de los Enamorados (the rock that resembles a sleeping giant). Meanwhile El Romeral faces south, in the direction of El Torcal (the nature reserve with unusual rock formations). It was his discovery that led to the declaration of a World Heritage Site by Unesco on 15 July 2016.

Hoskin was presented with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts awarded by the Spanish government in 2016.

Antequera town hall named a viewpoint that bears a bust of him facing the sunrise and the Peña de los Enamorados.

The monument and viewpoint were inaugurated on 7 April 2017 and Hoskin, then 87, travelled to Antequera with four generations of his family for the occasion.

He died at the age of 91 on 5 December 2021 at his home in Cambridge.