CARL OTTO LAMPLAND
J. C. Duncan
Dec 1, 1952
Citations
2
Citations
Journal
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Full text
Semantic Scholar
Key Takeaway Key Takeaway: Percival Lowell had written to him, expressing his dissatisfaction with his work and his lack of interest in the future of the Observatory.
Abstract
By the death of Carl Otto Lampland on December 14, 1951, the Lowell Observatory lost its assistant director and senior astronomer, and many people lost a friend. Lampland was born of Norwegian parents in a log house near the village of Hayfield, Minnesota, December 29, 1873, the third of eleven children. He grew up in that neighborhood, attending country school and working on a farm. Later he clerked in a store, and, among other activities, played clarinet in the village band. He attended the Valparaiso Normal School at Valparaiso, Indiana, and received the B.S. degree there in 1899. Desiring to do more advanced study, he then entered Indiana University, where his interest in astronomy was awakened ; he was graduated with the degree of B.A. in 1902. Indiana University conferred upon him the degree of M.A. in 1906 (for his work in planetary photography), and the honorary LL.D. in 1930. Upon his graduation, he accepted the position of principal of the high school at Bloomfield, Indiana. Less than three months after he began his work at Bloomfield, however, he was offered the position of astronomer by Percival Lowell upon the recommendation of J. A. Miller, W. A. Cogshall, and V. M. Slipher, who had known him at Indiana University. Lampland promptly accepted the position at the Lowell Observatory, and held it until his death forty-nine years later. For one semester in 1929 he was exchange professor of astronomy at Princeton University. In 1911 he married Verna B. Darby, who had been his classmate at Indiana University, and who survives him. Lampland was a man of great kindness and friendliness, intense loyalty, becoming modesty, and broad interests. His loyalty to the founder of the Observatory was excessive, but this did not prevent him from holding his own in their many arguments. I remember an occasion early in 1905 when, upon opening his mail, he became taciturn and depressed for several days, a very unusual state for him. At last I found out what was troubling him : Mr.