Percival Lawrence Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer. He is best known for his speculations of life on Mars and for influencing the naming of Pluto, chosen in part based on his initials.
Background
Percival was born on March 13, 1855, at Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was a member of the Brahmin Lowell family, his siblings included the poet Amy Lowell, the educator and legal scholar Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, an early activist for prenatal care.
Education
Percival graduated from the Noble and Greenough School in 1872 and Harvard University in 1876 with distinction in mathematics. At his college graduation, he gave a speech, considered very advanced for its time, on the nebular hypothesis. He was later awarded honorary degrees from Amherst College and Clark University.
After college, Lowell worked in his family's textile business. In 1882, a lecture on Japan inspired him to travel to the Far East. He 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: An Unexplored Corner of Japan (1891) and Occult Japan, or the Way of the Gods (1894), the latter from his third and final trip to the region. His time in Korea inspired Chosön: The Land of the Morning Calm (1886, Boston). 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. The writer Lafcadio Hearn called it a "colossal, splendid, godlike book." At his death he left with his assistant Wrexie Leonard an unpublished manuscript of a book entitled Peaks and Plateaux in the Effect on Tree Life.
In the 1890s, Lowell learned about the discovery of "canalis" on Mars by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. Schiaparelli was reporting on channels crisscrossing the surface of the red planet, but the English translation of "canals" fired up excitement in Lowell.
Determined to be prepared for the Martian opposition in 1894, when the red planet drew closest to Earth, Lowell decided to build an observatory. In search of the ideal place to study Mars, he selected Flagstaff, Arizona, where the high altitude, thin atmosphere and remote location would give him a good view of the planet. There, he built Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill, where he sketched the surface of Mars as it drew near. What he found - or thought he found - electrified him.
Soon after his observations, Lowell announced his discovery of canals and oases on Mars. The long straight lines he sketched and described were not natural features but channels of water cut by a dying civilization, he claimed. Variations in brightness were caused by increased vegetation as water flow increased throughout the year.
The idea of intelligent beings on Mars quickly caught on in the public imagination, fueled by Lowell's abundant enthusiasm. He delivered series of lectures on the canals and the society that constructed them, as well as writing three books - "Mars" (1895), "Mars and Its Canals" (1906), and "Mars As the Abode of Life" (1908) - and a slew of articles on the red planet.
But the canals that Lowell emphatically insisted he saw could not be observed by other scientists, though the amateur astronomer insisted that such observations depended heavily on viewing conditions. Lowell had found evidence of water vapor, but this result was also unable to be duplicated. Nor could astronomers find any sign of intelligent life - or life in any form. The atmosphere was too thin, the gravity too low.
Lowell's canals were definitively disproven by NASA's Mariner missions. In 1965, Mariner 4 took close-up pictures of Mars, and in 1972, Mariner 9 mapped it. No canals were found.
Lowell mapped features on Venus, as well, though later observations revealed that none could be seen through the planet's thick atmosphere. Most likely, the features Lowell spotted on both bodies were the result of an optical illusion caused by his telescope.
Despite all of this, the public clung to the idea of advanced civilizations on the red planet. While Lowell may not have contributed to scientific findings regarding Mars, he certainly played a role in magnifying the public's imagination when it came to the nearby planet, a love affair that continues on today.
Lowell didn't focus only on planets known to exist in the solar system. In the early 20th century, the amateur astronomer calculated that variations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus were caused by a ninth planet, which he dubbed Planet X. Neptune had been found due to strange movements in the orbit of Uranus about 60 years earlier, and Lowell was convinced he could find another planet the same way.
In 1905, Lowell put the observatory to work searching for the missing planet. Cameras took pictures of the same swatch of the sky at different times. Observers poured over the images, searching for movement that would indicate a planet.
Lowell had suffered health problems over the course of his lifetime, including nervous breakdowns. On November 12, 1916, at the age of 61, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Mars Hill.
Lowell left behind a million-dollar legacy to fund the observatory's continued search for Planet X. His widow contested the gift, and a legal battle ensued that depleted most of the funds. Ultimately, the search for the planet continued.
Lowell claimed to "stick to the church" though at least one current author describes him as an agnostic.
Views
Lowell more than anyone else popularized the long-held belief that Mars 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 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.
While this idea excited the public, the astronomical community was skeptical. Many astronomers could not see these markings, and few believed that they were as extensive as Lowell claimed. As a result, Lowell and his observatory were largely ostracized.
Quotations:
"The whole object of science is to synthesize, and so simplify; and we but know the uttermost of a subject we could make it singularly clear."
"Formulae are the anaesthetics of thought, not its stimulants and to make anyone think is far better worthwhile than cramming him with ill-considered, and therefore indigestible, learning."
"War is a survival among us from savage times and affects now chiefly the boyish and unthinking element of the nation. The wisest realize that there are better ways for practicing heroism and other and more certain ends of insuring the survival of the fittest. It is something a people outgrow."
"So far as thought may peer into the past, the epic of our solar system began with a great catastrophe. Two suns met. What had been, ceased; what was to be, arose. Fatal to both progenitors, the event dated a stupendous cosmic birth."
Membership
Percival Lowell was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
United States
1892
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Lowell’s observations were as accurate as they could be for their time,” Chayka writes, “but his enthusiastic interpretation of the canals as Martian constructions alienated his assistants and annoyed Schiaparelli himself." - Kyle Chayka
Connections
In 1908, Lowell married Constance Savage Keith. They had no children.