Percival Lowell
Percival Lowell (born March 13, 1855 in Boston , † November 12, 1916 in Flagstaff , Arizona ) was an American astronomer . He started out as an amateur researcher but became one of the most famous astronomers of his time and the founder of the Lowell Observatory .
He came from one of the richest and most respected patrician families in Boston . His sister Amy Lowell achieved fame as a poet and his brother Abbott Lawrence Lowell as president of Harvard University . His cousin Abbott Lawrence Rotch founded the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory Boston and introduced the weather kite to aerology .
Lowell's ever-present interest in astronomy was heightened by Giovanni Schiaparelli 's observations of the planets , in particular by his discovery of the “ Martian channels ” during the favorable opposition of 1877. Triggered by seasonal discolorations on Mars, this gave Lowell and Camille Flammarion the idea that the "Canali" could be artificially built channels to irrigate the drying Red Planet.
This opinion met with the mass media , which were already open to all sensations at that time , and the " Martians " mania and a series of science fiction literature emerged. It was not until the space probes of the 1960s that the Canali were disproved as a real structure, but can in part be explained as a visual reinforcement of terrace edges and light edges, rows of craters or canyons such as the Valles Marineris .
Soon Lowell was turning his hobby into a serious and successful science . To promote planetology , the wealthy amateur astronomer Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1894 . He succeeded in attracting excellent experts (e.g. AE Douglass ) for his well-equipped institute. Intensive studies of Mars, Venus and other planets as well as the Milky Way have been carried out.
In his Boston office in 1905 he hired the mathematician and physicist Elizabeth Langdon Williams to perform the mathematical location calculations for the prediction of a planet that influenced the orbit of the well-known planets Neptune and Uranus . Their calculations led to predictions about the location of the unknown planet; but since Lowell died in 1916, the project was stopped. In 1930 Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto , which had long been classified as a planet, in his observatory and was given the abbreviation “PL” for two reasons. To this day, the institute has an excellent reputation and is currently dedicated to asteroid research.
The asteroid (1886) Lowell is named after him.
Awards
- 1892 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1904 Jules Janssen Prize
Fonts (selection)
- The soul of the Far East . Translation Berta Franzos . Jena: Eugen Diedrichs, 1911
Web links
- Literature by and about Percival Lowell in the catalog of the German National Library
- Publications by P. Lowell in the Astrophysics Data System
- Obituaries for P. Lowell in the Astrophysics Data System
- The Nine Planets - Glossary (from The Nine Planets )
Individual evidence
- ↑ The small encyclopedia , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 2, page 75
- ↑ Chosön, the Land of the Morning Calm; a Sketch of Korea . 1888. Retrieved June 12, 2013.
- ^ Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1 in the Google Book Search
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lowell, Percival |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 13, 1855 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Boston |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 12, 1916 |
| Place of death | Flagstaff |