Named in honour of Robert Lewis Hawkes (b. 1951-09-12 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada), professor of physics at Mount Allison University since 1981 and Head of the Physics Department from 2000 to 2003. Hawkes became interested in astronomy as a teenager and studied with Jim Jones at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1979 for work on the dustball theory of meteoroids. He was among the first to propose that meteoroids were held together with a volatile "glue" and he has been involved in the computation of meteoroid orbits from fortuitously gathered video observations such as the Peekskill meteor in 1992. An exceptional teacher, Hawkes has been awarded the 3M Teaching Fellow Award and numerous other citations.
Name proposed and citation prepared by Peter Jedicke and Robert Jedicke.

Reference: MPC 44594