Jack Horkheimer was best known for his astronomy show Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler, which started airing on PBS on November 4,1976.
24 Facts About Jack Horkheimer
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Jack Horkheimer was born in 1938 to a wealthy family in Randolph, Wisconsin, the son of Mary Edmunda and Arthur Philip Horkheimer.
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Jack Horkheimer graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1963 as a distinguished scholar.
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Jack Horkheimer moved to Miami, Florida, in 1964 for health reasons and began volunteering at the Miami Science Museum planetarium.
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Jack Horkheimer started his astronomy career in 1964, when he was 26, after he moved to Miami and met astronomer Arthur Smith.
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Jack Horkheimer started volunteering at the planetarium writing shows and was later offered a position with the museum.
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Smith asked Jack Horkheimer to run the Miami Space Transit Planetarium when it opened in 1966.
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Jack Horkheimer's shows were successful and the planetarium went from losing money to becoming profitable.
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Jack Horkheimer worked his way up to become the planetarium's educational director and eventually the executive director.
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Jack Horkheimer changed the planetarium show from a science lecture to a multimedia event including music, lights and narration.
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Jack Horkheimer created the Child of the Universe show for the planetarium in 1972, which became famous and used in other planetariums across the country.
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Jack Horkheimer became the executive director of the Miami Museum of Science's Space Transit Planetarium in 1973 and stayed there for 35 years until his retirement in 2008.
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Jack Horkheimer was probably best known for his naked-eye astronomy television show Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler, which started in 1976 and was broadcast nationally in 1985.
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Jack Horkheimer appeared on CNN several times, narrating solar eclipses and even hosted shows on Cartoon Network.
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Jack Horkheimer was born with a congenital degenerative lung disease known as bronchiectasis and, as a result, suffered from chronic pain.
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Jack Horkheimer's ailment was not diagnosed until he was 18 years old.
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Jack Horkheimer had been close to death on several occasions because of his health issues.
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Jack Horkheimer had a tombstone prepared and wrote his own epitaph, which reads:.
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Jack Horkheimer died at his Florida home on the morning of August 20,2010 at the age of 72.
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Jack Horkheimer's death was related to the respiratory ailment from which he had suffered since childhood.
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Jack Horkheimer had never been married and did not have any children.
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Jack Horkheimer's death was confirmed by his niece, Kathy, and Tony Lima, marketing vice president for the Miami Science Museum, Horkheimer's employer.
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Jack Horkheimer's estate was put into probate due to concerns over his later mental well-being and the dating of his will.
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Jack Horkheimer's family disputed the claim, believing the accusation sent him into a downward spiral that expedited his death.