Marvin Hewitt (born 1922) was an American

impostor An impostor (also spelled imposter) is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise. Their objective is usually to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but also often for purposes ...

who became, among other things, a university

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

professor. Hewitt was a

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

drop-out with no qualifications who wanted to become an academic. He always used names and identities of real-life people in his impostures. He later claimed that he had a "compulsion to teach". Hewitt's first imposture began in 1945 when he selected a famous name from a list of university teachers and used it to apply for a position of an aerodynamic engineer. However, the name was too recognizable and he was soon exposed. The next identity Hewitt adopted was that of

Julius Ashkin Julius Ashkin (August 23, 1920 – June 4, 1982) was a leader in experimental and theoretical physics known for furthering the evolution of particle physics from nuclear physics. As a theoretical physicist he made contributions in the fields of st ...

, a physics professor. He applied and was accepted first into a pharmacological college in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and the next year into teacher's college in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

. When he began to gain academic fame, the real Ashkin wrote him to suggest that he stop. Hewitt proceeded to adopt the persona of Georg Hewitt, former chief researcher of

Radio Corporation of America The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

. When he was found out, he switched to that of philosophy professor Clifford Berry. In 1954, Hewitt was on his fifth teaching job as Dr. Kenneth Yates, an associate professor of physics at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

. At that stage two other colleges had discovered that his credentials were false when they noticed that the real Kenneth Yates was currently working for an oil company. They had only removed him from the faculty and the university authorities had decided to let him leave quietly when the details leaked out.

References

*
The Compulsion.

Time magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...

. March 15, 1954
Honest career for Ph(ony)D: brilliant hoaxer Marvin Hewitt becomes a respected engineer.

Life magazine ''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...

. January 21, 1957, pp. 57–82. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hewitt, Marvin 1922 births Possibly living people Impostors People who fabricated academic degrees