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Percival observing Mars from the Lowell Observatory.
Percival Lowell (March 13, 1855 – November 13, 1916) was a wealthy amateur astronomer who was convinced that there
were canals on Mars, and was the founder of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Biography
Percival Lowell came from the distinguished Boston
Lowell family. In addition to his own accomplishments his younger brother
Abbott was president of Harvard University, and his sister Amy Lowell was a
well-known Imagist poet and critic.
Percival Lowell graduated from Harvard in 1876 with distinction in mathematics, and
traveled extensively through the Far East before deciding to study Mars and astronomy as a full-time career. He was particularly
interested in the "canals" of Mars, as drawn by Giovanni
Schiaparelli, who was director of the Milan Observatory and an esteemed Italian astronomer.
In 1894 he moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. At an altitude of over 7000 feet, and with few
cloudy nights, it was an excellent site for astronomical observations. For the next fifteen years he studied Mars extensively,
and drew intricate drawing of the surface markings as he perceived them. Lowell published his views in three books: Mars
(1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908). He thereby instigated the long-held
belief that Mars had once sustained intelligent life forms.
Lowell's greatest contribution to planetary studies came during the last 8 years of his life, which he devoted to the search
for Planet X, which was the designation for a planet beyond Neptune. The search
continued for a number of years after his death at Flagstaff in 1916; the new planet, named Pluto, was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in
1930. The symbol for
the planet is a stylized "PL" (♇), chosen in part to honor Lowell.
It is interesting to note, that predictions of a planet beyond Neptune were based on discrepancies between the predicted and observed positions of Neptune and Uranus,
and the erroneous assumption that such discrepancies were caused by the gravitational influence of an unknown planet. In fact,
the discrepancies were due to erroneous values for the masses of Neptune and Uranus; with modern precise values, the discrepancies disappear, and in any case it is now known that the
mass of Pluto is far too small to exert any appreciable gravitational influence on other planets.
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