Abstract
AMONG the many eminent American astronomers of last century, few were better known than Charles Augustus Young, the centenary of whose birth occurs on December 15. As a pioneer of solar spectroscopy, he was second to none, while his great gifts as a writer and teacher gained for him a world-wide reputation. Born at Hanover, New Hampshire, where both his father and grandfather had held chairs in Dartmouth College, he graduated in 1853, and then after a tour in Europe with his father, for a few years taught classics and theology. At twenty-three years of age he was made professor of mathe matics in Western Reserve College, Ohio, and from that time onwards devoted himself to astronomy. The Civil War for a short time interrupted his work, but in 1866 he succeeded his father in the chair of astronomy at Dartmouth College, and eleven years later succeeded Alexander as professor of astronomy at Princeton, a position he held until his retirement in 1905. Although he made investigations of the spectra of the planets, comets, stars and nebulae, his main interest was in solar investigations. He observed total solar eclipses at Burlington, Iowa, in 1869, at Tenez de Frontena, Spain, in 1870, at Denver in 1878, in Russia in 1887 and in North Carolina in 1900. It was in connexion with the eclipse of 1870 that he made his striking discovery of the so-called ‘reversing layer’. He observed the transit of Venus of 1874 at Peking and that of 1882 at Princeton. His well-known book “The Sun” appeared first in 1881, while later he published his “General Astronomy”, 1889, “Elements of Astro nomy”, 1891 and “Manual of Astronomy”, 1902. His book on “The Sun” passed through many editions and was translated into several languages. Honours came to him from England, Germany, Italy and France, and in 1891 he was awarded the Janssen Medal of the Paris Academy of Sciences. In 1882 he served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died at Hanover, New Hampshire, on January 3, 1908, at the age of seventy-three years.
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Charles Augustus Young (1834–1908). Nature 134, 926 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134926b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134926b0