Percival Lawrence Lowell (; March 13, 1855 – November 12, 1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars.
He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. ==Life and career== ===Early life and work=== Percival Lowell was born on March 13, 1855, in Boston, Massachusetts, the first son of Augustus Lowell and Katherine Bigelow Lowell.
They were the great-grandchildren of John Lowell and, on their mother's side, the grandchildren of Abbott Lawrence. Percival graduated from the Noble and Greenough School in 1872 and Harvard University in 1876 with distinction in mathematics.
They were the great-grandchildren of John Lowell and, on their mother's side, the grandchildren of Abbott Lawrence. Percival graduated from the Noble and Greenough School in 1872 and Harvard University in 1876 with distinction in mathematics.
After graduation he ran a cotton mill for six years. In the 1880s, Lowell traveled extensively in the Far East.
In August 1883, he served as a foreign secretary and counselor for a special Korean diplomatic mission to the United States.
The canals, and even Lowell's mausoleum, heavily influence The Gods of Mars (1918) by Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as all other books in the Barsoom series. Asteroid 1886 Lowell, discovered by Henry Giclas and Robert Schaldach in 1949, as well as crater Lowell on the Moon, and crater Lowell on Mars, were named after him.
The writer Lafcadio Hearn called it a "colossal, splendid, godlike book." At his death he left with his assistant Wrexie Leonard an unpublished manuscript of a book entitled Peaks and Plateaux in the Effect on Tree Life. Lowell was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892.
He moved back to the United States in 1893.
Beginning in the winter of 1893–94, using his wealth and influence, Lowell dedicated himself to the study of astronomy, founding the observatory which bears his name.
This marked the first time an observatory had been deliberately located in a remote, elevated place for optimal seeing. In 1904, Lowell received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society.
Lowell started a search program in 1906.
Lowell claimed to "stick to the church" though at least one current author describes him as an agnostic. ===Canals of Mars=== For some fifteen years (1893 to about 1908) Lowell studied Mars extensively, making intricate drawings of the surface markings as he perceived them.
Although the consensus was that some actual features did exist which would account for these markings, in 1909 the sixty-inch Mount Wilson Observatory telescope in Southern California allowed closer observation of the structures Lowell had interpreted as canals, and revealed irregular geological features, probably the result of natural erosion. The existence of canal-like features was definitively disproved in the 1960s by NASA's Mariner missions.
From 1914 to 1916, a telescope on loan from Sproul Observatory was used to search for Planet X.
Lowell did not discover Pluto but later Lowell Observatory (observatory code 690) would photograph Pluto in March and April 1915, without realizing at the time that it was not a star. In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, working at the Lowell Observatory, discovered Pluto near the location expected for Planet X.
Percival Lawrence Lowell (; March 13, 1855 – November 12, 1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars.
This, along with some setbacks in his astronomical work (described below), undermined his health and contributed to his death from a stroke on November 12, 1916, aged 61.
From 1914 to 1916, a telescope on loan from Sproul Observatory was used to search for Planet X.
Lowell did not discover Pluto but later Lowell Observatory (observatory code 690) would photograph Pluto in March and April 1915, without realizing at the time that it was not a star. In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, working at the Lowell Observatory, discovered Pluto near the location expected for Planet X.
The canals, and even Lowell's mausoleum, heavily influence The Gods of Mars (1918) by Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as all other books in the Barsoom series. Asteroid 1886 Lowell, discovered by Henry Giclas and Robert Schaldach in 1949, as well as crater Lowell on the Moon, and crater Lowell on Mars, were named after him.
Although the consensus was that some actual features did exist which would account for these markings, in 1909 the sixty-inch Mount Wilson Observatory telescope in Southern California allowed closer observation of the structures Lowell had interpreted as canals, and revealed irregular geological features, probably the result of natural erosion. The existence of canal-like features was definitively disproved in the 1960s by NASA's Mariner missions.
However, it would subsequently emerge that the Planet X theory was mistaken. Pluto's mass could not be determined until 1978, when its satellite Charon was discovered.
Voyager 2's 1989 encounter with Neptune yielded a more accurate value of its mass, and the discrepancies disappear when using this value. ==Legacy== Although Lowell's theories of the Martian canals, of surface features on Venus, and of Planet X are now discredited, his practice of building observatories at the position where they would best function has been adopted as a principle.
In 2006, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union. In addition, it is now known that the discrepancies between the predicted and observed positions of Uranus and Neptune were not caused by the gravity of an unknown planet.
The Lowell Regio on Pluto was also named in his honor after its discovery by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. ==Publications== The Soul of the Far East (1888) Noto: An Unexplored Corner of Japan (1891) Occult Japan, or the Way of the Gods (1894) Collected Writings on Japan and Asia, including Letters to Amy Lowell and Lafcadio Hearn, 5 vols., Tokyo: Edition Synapse.
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