Everything about Percival Lowell totally explained
Percival Lawrence Lowell (
March 13,
1855–
November 12,
1916) was a businessman, author, mathematician, and
astronomer who fueled speculation that there were
canals on
Mars, 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. The choice of the name Pluto and its symbol were partly influenced by his initials PL.
Biography
Percival Lowell, a descendant of the
Boston Lowell family, was the brother of
A. Lawrence, president of
Harvard University, and
Amy, an
imagist poet, critic, and publisher.
Percival graduated from the
Noble and Greenough School in
1872 and
Harvard University in
1876 with distinction in mathematics.
In the 1880s, Lowell traveled extensively in the
Far East. In August 1883, he served as a foreign secretary and counsellor for a special
Korean diplomatic mission to the
United States. He also spent significant periods of time in
Japan, writing books on Japanese religion, psychology, and behavior. His texts are filled with observations and academic discussions of various aspects of Japanese life, including language, religious practices, economics, travel in Japan, and the development of personality. Books by Percival Lowell on the Orient include
Noto (1891) and
Occult Japan (1894); the latter from his third and final trip to the region. The most popular of Lowell's books on the Orient,
The Soul of the Far East, (1888) contains an early synthesis of some of his ideas, that in essence, postulated that human progress is a function of the qualities of individuality and imagination.
Beginning in the winter of 1893-94, using his wealth and influence, Lowell became determined to study Mars and astronomy as a full-time career after reading
Camille Flammarion's
La planète Mars. He was interested in the
canals of Mars, as drawn by Italian astronomer
Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was director of the Milan Observatory.
For the last 23 years of his life astronomy, Lowell Observatory, and his and others' work at his observatory were the focal points of his life. Lowell died on November 12, 1916 and was buried on Mars Hill near his observatory.
Astronomy career
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 made intricate drawings 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.
His works include a detailed description of what he termed the 'non-natural features' of the planet's surface, including especially a full account of the 'canals,' single and double; the 'oases,' as he termed the dark spots at their intersections; and the varying visibility of both, depending partly on the Martian seasons. He upheld the theory that the canals had been constructed for the purpose of 'husbanding' Mars's scanty water-supply.
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 planet, named
Pluto, was discovered by
Clyde Tombaugh in
1930. Pluto's
astronomical symbol is a stylized P-L
monogram,, chosen in part to honor Lowell.
It is notable 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. These discrepancies were due to erroneous values for the masses of Neptune and Uranus; with modern precise values, the discrepancies disappear. It is now known that the mass of Pluto is too small to exert an appreciable gravitational influence large enough to disturb the orbits of other planets to a degree we can observe and measure.
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