Sebastian Rudolf Karl von Hoerner (15 April 1919 – 7 January 2003) was a German astrophysicist and radio astronomer. He was born in Görlitz, Lower Silesia. After the end of World War II he studied physics at University of Göttingen. He obtained his doctorate at the same university in 1951 from Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Together with him he conducted simulation studies of the formation of stars and globular clusters. He continued this work at Astronomical Calculation Institute (University of Heidelberg) with Walter Fricke. He obtained his habilitation in 1959 at the University of Heidelberg. In 1962 he moved to National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Green Bank, West Virginia), where he collaborated, inter alia, with Frank Drake. He worked there, among others on the analysis of work and