LOWELL, PERCIVAL (1855-1916), American astron omer, was born in Boston, Mass., on March 13, 1855. A member of a brilliant family, he graduated with honours at Harvard in 1876 and after a year of travel returned to Boston where he was active in business. From 1883 to 1893 his energies were chiefly devoted to literature and travel, much of the time in the Far East, which he pictured in Choson (1885), The Soul of the Far East (1888), Noto (1891) and Occult Japan (1895). During part of this period he was counsellor and foreign secretary to the special mission from Korea to the United States. In the '9os, inspired by Schiaparelli's discovery of the canali on Mars, he determined to devote his fortune and energy to a study of the planets and after careful scrutiny of desirable sites founded the great observatory which bears his name at Flagstaff, Arizona. The theory which he advanced in his lectures and writings was that the intelligent inhabitants of a dying Mars are struggling to keep alive by a planet-wide system of irrigation from the water of the melt ing polar snow-caps and that the so-called "canals" are bands of cultivated vegetation dependent on this system of irrigation. His
books along this line include Mars and Its Canals (1906), Mars as the Abode of Life (1908), The Evolution of Worlds (I 91 0), Memoir on a Trans-Neptunian Planet (1915), and Memoir on Saturn's Rings (1915). Although his theory met with opposition, he received numerous scientific honours. He died in Flagstaff, Ariz., on Nov. 12, 1916.
See L. Leonard, Percival Lowell (1921) ; J. A. Peterson, "Percival Lowell—His Life and Work," Roy. Astr. Soc. Journ., vol. xvi. (1922) ; Popular Astronomy, vol?xxv., pp. 219-223 (1917).