NSF Award
9710226
Percival Lowell was an astronomer of the later Victorian era. This book-length biography will reveal new facets of Lowell by placing his life and work in cultural context. The book will show how Lowell's upper-class background in Victorian Boston and his ten-year testing of scientific approaches to understanding Japanese culture shaped his decision to establish the Lowell Observatory and to embark on projects such as the searches for life on Mars and on Planet X. To accomplish this task the biography will necessarily explore the borderland between history of science and cultural history and will explore such themes as Lowell the Brahmin, the Victorian polymath, and the evolutionist in order to clarify the intersection between science and culture. Among the sources to be consulted are the papers of Lowell's contemporaries and rivals, including Seth Chandler, W.W. Campbell, and E.E. Barnard.
