28 Facts About Percival Lowell

Percival Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and furthered theories of a ninth planet within the Solar System.

Percival Lowell 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.

Percival Lowell was born on March 13,1855, in Boston, Massachusetts, the first son of Augustus Lowell and Katherine Bigelow Lowell.

Percival Lowell graduated from the Noble and Greenough School in 1872 and Harvard College in 1876 with distinction in mathematics.

Percival Lowell was later awarded honorary degrees from Amherst College and Clark University.

Percival Lowell spent significant periods of time in Japan, writing books on Japanese religion, psychology, and behavior.

Percival Lowell's 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.

The most popular of Percival Lowell's books on the Orient, The Soul of the Far East, 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.

Percival Lowell was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892.

Percival Lowell moved back to the United States in 1893.

Percival Lowell became determined to study Mars and astronomy as a full-time career after reading Camille Flammarion's La planete Mars.

Percival Lowell was particularly interested in the canals of Mars, as drawn by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was director of the Milan Observatory.

The Boston geologist George Russel Agassiz noted that Percival Lowell made the decision to begin his observations after hearing that Schiaparelli began to experience failing eyesight.

Percival Lowell chose Flagstaff, Arizona Territory, as the home of his new observatory.

At his Flagstaff observatory Percival Lowell favored the use of smaller telescopes rather than larger ones, believing that they were usually better for viewing fine planetary details.

Percival Lowell was assisted in setting up his observatory by William Pickering, another observer of Mars who had noted the lines seen by Schiaparelli as well.

In 1904, Percival Lowell received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Societe astronomique de France, the French astronomical society.

World War I very much saddened Percival Lowell, a dedicated pacifist.

Percival Lowell claimed to "stick to the church" though at least one current author describes him as an agnostic.

For some fifteen years Percival Lowell studied Mars extensively, making intricate drawings of the surface markings as he perceived them.

Percival Lowell published his views in three books: Mars, Mars and Its Canals, and Mars As the Abode of Life.

Percival Lowell theorized that an advanced but desperate culture had built the canals to tap Mars' polar ice caps, the last source of water on an inexorably drying planet.

Percival Lowell observed the planet high in the daytime sky with the telescope's lens stopped down to 3 inches in diameter to reduce the effect of the turbulent daytime atmosphere.

Percival Lowell observed spoke-like surface features including a central dark spot, contrary to what was suspected then : that Venus has no surface features visible from Earth, being covered in an atmosphere that is opaque.

Lowell believed that the planets Uranus and Neptune were displaced from their predicted positions by the gravity of the unseen Planet X Lowell started a search program in 1906.

From 1914 to 1916, a 9-inch telescope on loan from Sproul Observatory was used to search for Planet X Lowell did not discover Pluto but later Lowell Observatory would photograph Pluto in March and April 1915, without realizing at the time that it was not a star.

Percival Lowell established the program and setting which made the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh possible.

Percival Lowell has been described by other planetary scientists as "the most influential popularizer of planetary science in America before Carl Sagan".