John Barrie Hutchings (b. 1941) uses observations from the X-ray to the radio regimes to probe intrinsically-luminous stars, X-ray binaries, neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes, and active galactic nuclei and quasars.

John Barrie Hutchings was born in 1941 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1962, his bachelor’s with Honours in 1963, and his master’s in 1964 from the Rand University of South Africa. He then obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge in England in 1967. From 1967 to 1969, he took a position as a postdoctoral researcher at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia, and he remains there as a researcher to this day.

Hutchings specializes in the atmospheres of OB stars (very hot blue stars). In 1968, he discovered that these stars, which have very thick atmospheres, generate hot stellar winds.

In 1983, after ten years of research on binary stars, he made a major discovery: Hutchings, along with coworkers Anne Cowley and David Crampton, identified the first black hole located outside our galaxy - LMC X-3.
Orbit type: Main Belt

Reference: MPC 79913