Early Nobel Prize Nominees

Photos of the Month — August 2015

With Pluto being on everyone’s radar for the past month, we’ve decided to share our images of those astronomers whose careers involved the dwarf planet. In the 1840s the French mathematician, Urbain Le Verrier, predicted the position of Neptune. Future observations of Neptune in the late 19th century led astronomers to believe Uranus’s orbit was being disrupted by another planet besides Neptune. Around this same time, Percival Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell began a large-scale project in search of a possible ninth planet in 1906. Lowell termed this unknown body as “Planet X.”

Unfortunately, Lowell died in 1916, never finding Planet X. The search was resurrected in 1929 under the new Lowell Observatory director, Vesto Melvin Slipher. In 1930 at Lowell Observatory, American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. Since being named by Venetia Burney, an 11 year old from Oxford, England, Pluto has been a celestial celebrity; both the Disney cartoon character and the element, Plutonium, are among Pluto’s claims to fame.

Please enjoy these photos of some of our favorite scientists associated with everyone’s favorite dwarf planet. To see more images like the ones we’ve selected type the name of a scientist or an observatory in the search engine.