Venetia Phair

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Venetia Katherine Douglas Phair née Burney (born July 11, 1918 in England , † April 30, 2009 in Banstead ) suggested the name of the celestial body Pluto , discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh . She was eleven at the time and lived in Oxford , England.

Life

Venetia Phair was the daughter of theologian Charles Fox Burney and his wife Ethel Wordsworth Madan. She was the granddaughter of Falconer Madan (1851-1935) and the great niece of Henry Madan (1838-1901), who named the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos .

On March 14, 1930, she was sitting at her grandfather's breakfast table when he read an article from The Times about the discovery of a new, previously nameless planet . Venetia spontaneously suggested the name "Pluto" - an inspiration that arose from her occupation with Greek mythology and astrology at the time .

Her grandfather wrote the proposal to the astronomer Herbert Hall Turner of Oxford University , who carried it into the name-finding discussion of the Royal Astronomical Society that same day . On May 1, 1930 the name was officially announced.

Phair later studied mathematics at Cambridge University and worked as a math and economics teacher at a girls' school in south-west London . In 1947 she married Edward Maxwell Phair, who later became headmaster of Epsom College .

In the 2006 debate about Pluto's planetary status, Venetia Phair told the BBC that she was largely indifferent to the dispute at her age, even though she would rather wish him to remain a planet.

Follow-up names

In 1930, Walt Disney renamed a new character, a dog that was originally called "Rover" and later became a companion to Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters, due to the discovery of the planet Pluto to Pluto . The name of the element plutonium, discovered in 1941, and the names Plutino from 1996 and Plutoid from 2008 for certain trans-Neptunian objects were also derived from the name of the celestial body .

Honors

In honor of Venetia Phair, the asteroid (6235) Burney was named after its discoverers Seiji Ueda and Hiroshi Kaneda in 1987 , and in 2006 the New Horizons spacecraft's instrument Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter for measuring dust particles was named after it.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Grimes: Venetia Phair Dies at 90; as a Girl, She Named Pluto , New York Times, May 10, 2009
  2. ^ Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. Friday, June 13, 1930 The Observatory 53 July 1930, p 199 (English)
  3. ↑ Pluto's namesake is dead , Spiegel Online, May 11, 2009
  4. ↑ Paul Rincon: The girl who named a planet , BBC News Online, January 13, 2006 (English)
  5. ↑ Pluto-Bound, Student-Built Dust Detector Renamed "Venetia," Honoring Girl Who Named Ninth Planet , press release, June 29, 2006 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Phair, Venetia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Phair, Venetia Katherine Douglas (full name); Burney, Venetia Katherine Douglas (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British teacher who suggested the name for the heavenly body Pluto
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH England
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 2009
Place of death Banstead