FRANK ELMORE ROSS, 1874-1960

Abstract

Frank Ross was born in San Francisco on April 2, 1874, and received his early education in the schools of that city. He graduated from the University of California with a B.S. degree in 1896. After graduation, he taught mathematics and physics for one year in the Mount Tamalpais Military Academy and then returned to the University of California for graduate work. In his first year as a graduate student he had a fellowship at Berkeley and in his second year was a fellow at the Lick Observatory. Before receiving his Ph.D. degree from the University of California in 1901, he spent one year at the University of Nevada where he was an assistant professor of mathematics. After graduation Dr. Ross computed perturbations of the Watson Asteroids for one year and then went to Washington, D.C., where for a year he was an assistant in the Nautical Almanac Office and for two years served as a Research Assistant of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. In that capacity he worked under Simon Newcomb on planetary and lunar problems and, at Newcomb's suggestion, computed a definitive orbit of Phoebe, the ninth satellite of Saturn. This orbit, which was published in the Annals of the Harvard College Observatory in 1905, was his first major independent publication in astronomy. In 1904, Dr. Ross married Margaret Benton and in 1905 they went to Gaithersburg, Maryland, where Dr. Ross became director of the International Latitude Observatory. There he completed the computations of the orbits of the sixth and seventh satellites of Jupiter that he had begun in Washington, and published them in the Lick Observatory Bulletin and the Astronomische Nachrichten, respectively. For the next ten years Dr. Ross continued