X-Nico

Harold Zirin

Zirin's zeal and infectious enthusiasm in the study of the sun led his Caltech astronomy students in the 1970s (led by David Brin and Dick Trtek) to produce comic books and graffiti on construction fences of Zirin as a mild-mannered professor who transformed into the super-hero Captain Corona whenever he stepped into a solar observatory.

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While attending Bassick High School, Zirin's home-built telescope won him a Westinghouse Prize, a Pepsi-Cola Scholarship, and scholarships to Harvard University as class of 1946 Valedictorian.

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