John A. Eddy - Interdisciplinary Work

Interdisciplinary Work

Eddy received much criticism from within the astronomy community for his interdisciplinary work on Native American medicine wheels, showing how they were used as calendars and observatories. It also earned him criticism from archaeologists at first, although his work was eventually accepted, and even documented in National Geographic and as a guest on TV and radio programs.

As a teacher, he frequently used historical examples to put his students at ease with the idea that not so long ago nobody knew more than they did about solar physics. This caused him to do a lot of research in the history of his own field, particularly covering records of past eclipses and sunspot counts, whereupon he discovered the records of Maunder and others demonstrating that there was indeed long term variability in solar activity.

Eugene Parker of the University of Chicago, when promoting his theory of the existence of a solar wind, which caused Parker to receive much scorn from the community, exposed Eddy to the work of Maunder vis a vis sunspot records.