[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 11558-11559]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         IN RECOGNITION OF THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF PERCIVAL LOWELL

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. RICHARD E. NEAL

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 14, 2015

  Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to 
introduce an article entitled ``The Bostonian astronomer who dreamed of 
Pluto'' that was published in the Boston Globe on July 12, 2015. 
Written by Ted Widmer, this article reviews the life and 
accomplishments of Percival Lowell, the Boston astronomer that had a 
tremendous impact on the discovery of Pluto. As the New Horizons 
spacecraft sped past that distant planet this morning, this article 
stands as a tribute to ensure we do not forget Percival Lowell's part 
in this great human achievement of innovation and exploration.

             The Bostonian Astronomer Who Dreamed of Pluto

                   (By Ted Widmer, The Boston Globe)

       This Tuesday, July 14, at 7:49:57 a.m. EDT, the New 
     Horizons spacecraft will rendezvous with Pluto at a point in 
     space nearly 3 billion miles from Earth. It's been a long 
     strange trip.
       New Horizons launched nearly a decade ago, on Jan. 19, 
     2006. It received a gravity boost from Jupiter in 2007, and 
     has been cruising at more than 30,000 miles per hour ever 
     since. It won't even slow down as it passes by the planet at 
     the end of the solar system, but it will gather data and take 
     photos as it screams silently by.
       By 7:49:58, the moment will have passed, and New Horizons 
     will be seeking new adventures in the Kuiper Belt.
       For New Englanders, there are a couple reasons to feel 
     proud of the fly-by. The mission is the first in the ``New 
     Frontiers'' series, named after President Kennedy. And Pluto 
     is something of a local concern. Though Pluto was formally 
     discovered by a Kansan named Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, he was 
     spurred to look where he did because of calculations made 
     years earlier by a Bostonian astronomer, Percival Lowell.
       Lowell was born in 1855, near the State House--the 
     epicenter of ``the Hub of the Solar System,'' as Oliver 
     Wendell Holmes famously called the city. More than most, 
     Lowell helped Boston live up to that claim, with his 
     relentless research into the heavens. The astronomical symbol 
     for Pluto, a P and L mashed together, is a tribute to him. 
     And by laying out instructions for where to look for the 
     celestial object he called ``Planet X,'' Lowell was like the 
     owner of a shoveled-out parking spot, leaving a battered lawn 
     chair as a space-saver, to mark his territory forever. How 
     Boston is that?

[[Page 11559]]

       Lowell was an unlikely astronomical pioneer. He grew up 
     privileged, one of a brood that included Harvard's future 
     president, A. Lawrence Lowell, and the poet Amy Lowell (whom 
     he called ``Big Fat Baby''). He could have coasted, the way 
     so many wealthy Americans did in the smug years that followed 
     the Civil War. But three deep passions seized him, and helped 
     him to achieve escape velocity--enough to leave Boston's 
     gravity forever.
       The first of these was Japan. In 1883, after a brief period 
     managing family investments, he set sail for what he called 
     ``the morning land,'' in search of spiritual enlightenment. 
     Americans had begun to appreciate Japanese design at the 1876 
     Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, so fresh and direct in 
     contrast to the grandiloquent statements of the Gilded Age. A 
     small wavelet of Bostonians traveled there, or even 
     established residence, including William Sturgis Bigelow (who 
     gave 40,000 Japanese artifacts to the MFA), Isabella Stewart 
     Gardner, Edward Sylvester Morse, and Ernest Fenollosa. Lowell 
     happily joined this expatriate tide, which fit perfectly his 
     desire to declare independence from the Hub.
       He lived in Japan for 10 years, and wrote prolifically 
     about Shintoism and other aspects of a culture that he found 
     un-Bostonian in every way--except for its ancestor worship. 
     At the same time, Boston helped him immensely, by 
     distributing his esoteric musings through well-trusted 
     outlets like The Atlantic. His writings inspired other 
     Japanophiles, and they helped Lowell gain the confidence to 
     explore other worlds. These he was beginning to glimpse, by 
     climbing Japanese mountains, where it was understood that 
     spiritual understanding came more quickly. The Buddhists 
     revere what they call ``celestial'' enlightenment. Typically, 
     Lowell found it in his own way, by searching the skies for 
     unusual objects.
       In 1893, he began to devote intense study to the planet 
     Mars, the second of his three obsessions. Learning that Mars 
     would be approaching close to Earth the next year, he dropped 
     everything and began to prepare. He purchased land on an 
     elevated plateau near Flagstaff, Ariz., brought two large 
     telescopes, and for the next 23 years devoted his attention 
     to the place he named Mars Hill. It became a kind of 
     transcendental-astronomical paradise for him, and he 
     delivered philosophical musings, like, ``To stand a mile and 
     a half nearer the stars is not to stand immune.'' Lowell's 
     principal thesis--that Mars contained a network of canals, 
     and was likely inhabited--was more imaginative than 
     scientific.
       But despite Lowell's failure to find signs of 
     extraterrestrial life, his years of close observation yielded 
     much valuable data, and helped people see our planetary 
     neighbor in new ways. The science fiction industry was not 
     slow to follow his lead, and tales of Martian invaders have 
     never failed to sell. He built an important establishment in 
     Arizona, the Lowell Observatory. And once again, he fell in 
     love with an exotic land--this time, the Southwest, where he 
     wandered happily, collecting plant specimens by day, and 
     stars by night.
       Lowell's third passion took him even further afield. 
     Earlier in life, as a young man recently graduated from 
     Harvard, he had tired of Boston's predictability, and 
     written, with the studied weariness of the young, that he was 
     considering ``migrating to another planet or ceasing to 
     exist.''
       In 1905, he began an obsessive search for a new planet, 
     beyond Neptune, the legendary ``Planet X.'' He predicted 
     where it might be found, and even photographed it in 1915, 
     although he was not aware that he had. He died a year later, 
     but it would have delighted this otherworldly thinker to know 
     that his research lived on and provided a road map to the 
     sky-gazers who followed in his wake.
       In 1930, when Pluto was finally pinpointed, there was 
     universal excitement. Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse's dog 
     after the discovery. The element plutonium was also named 
     after Pluto. There were now nine planets--a number that felt 
     right. It seemed as if Lowell had found final vindication, 
     after all those years chasing Japanese ghosts and Martian 
     canals.
       But year by year, as scientists got to know Pluto better, 
     they liked it less, finding it smaller than expected, icy, 
     and dubious in other ways, including its orbit and its 
     relationship with neighboring objects. In 2006, 101 years 
     after Lowell began his search for it, Pluto suffered the 
     ultimate indignity when it was downgraded to a ``dwarf 
     planet.'' The fleeting fly-by this Tuesday may help restore 
     luster to the object formerly known as Planet X. But more 
     than likely, we will have to look elsewhere for Lowell's 
     vindication.
       Fortunately, it's not too hard to find. In June, scientists 
     began to get excited again about the possibility of life on 
     Mars, and research is coming into the Martian subsoil. A 
     different monument to Lowell exists right here, in 
     Cambridge's Mount Auburn Cemetery. He is not buried there, 
     that would be too predictable (his actual grave is at Mars 
     Hill, in Arizona). But a piece of petrified rock, left by his 
     instruction, gives his grave's real location, and testifies 
     to the enduring individuality of a Bostonian who wanted to be 
     present, but not too present. Percival Lowell always 
     encountered the world on his own terms.

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