Prof. Percival Lowell

Abstract

BY the death, on November 12, of Percival Lowell, who equipped the Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, and planned its work with such conspicuous success, astronomy loses one of its most ardent disciples and enthusiastic observers. Prof. Lowell was born in Boston on March 13, 1855, and took his degree at Harvard in 1876. He lived in Japan at intervals from 1883 to 1893, and in the former year was appointed Counsellor and Foreign Secretary to the Korean Special Mission to the United States. His experiences of Eastern life were described in several memorable volumes, namely, “Chosön: a Sketch of Korea,” “The Soul of the Far East,” “Noto: an Unexplored Corner of Japan,” and “Occult Japan.” His other publications include “Mars,” published in 1895, “The Solar System,” “Mars and its Canals,” “Mars as the Abode of Life,” “The Evolution of Worlds,” and several fine volumes of “Annals of the Lowell Observatory.” In 1902 he was appointed non-resident professor of astronomy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1904 he received the Janssen medal of the French Astronomical Society for his researches on Mars. He had many admirers in this country, and was always ready to assist enterprises having the advancement of knowledge as their object. An illustration of this characteristic was the support which he gave to the Hill Observatory, Sidmouth; and he had the distinction of being the only one outside Great Britain who contributed financially to the endowment of this new observatory.