A handbook entry describing Hodgkin's experience on Loracus Prime
A.E. Hodgkin was a noted biologist, most famous for his creation of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development.
Hodgkin first visited the planet Loracus Prime as part of a science survey mission. As he noted in his log, the native termite life of Loracus was remarkably similar to that of Earth, Vulcan, and several other Class M worlds.
He initially considered the possibility that the termites were brought to Loracus by early space travelers, or even that they were a meteorite-borne species, but he quickly realized that Loracus Prime's location in the middle of the Gagarin Radiation Belt ruled out either possibility. In fact, travel to the Loracus star system had been all but impossible prior to the then-recent era of relative stability of Loracus Prime's star.
After carefully studying the termites' DNA, Hodgkin confirmed they were native to Loracus. Over the next decade and a half, Hodgkin slowly puzzled out the theory of parallel planetary development that would rock the biological world as profoundly as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had about two centuries before.
Crewman Cutler's copy of Handbook of Exobiology was left open to the page detailing this information in 2151. (ENT: "Strange New World")
Appendices[]
Background information[]
This character was only mentioned in writing.
An exact date of Hodgkin's visit to Loracus Prime wasn't given, but it would have to be some time after 2063 but before 2136. Since Darwin's theory from 1859 was stated to have caused upheaval "some two centuries earlier", Hodgkin's travels could have taken place soon after first contact.
According to the book Star Trek: Federation - The First 150 Years, Hodgkin's full name was Albert Elias Hodgkin and he visited Loracus Prime in 2093.
According to the novel Beneath the Raptor's Wing, Hodgkin's full name was Attanasio Ewan Hodgkin.
According to FASA's The Federation RPG sourcebook, his full name was Zancmar Hodgkins.
External link[]
- Attanasio Ewan Hodgkin at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works