Well-known astronomer, graduated at Harvard in 1876, lived much in Japan between 1883 and 1893, and in 1894 established at Flagstaff, AZ, the Lowell Observatory, of whose Annals (from 1898) he was editor. In 1902 he became non-resident professor of astronomy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He wrote several books on the Far East, including Chosön (1885), The Soul of the Far East (1886), Noto, an Unexplored Corner of Japan (1891), and Occult Japan (1895), but he is best known for his studies of the planet Mars—he wrote Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1907), and Mars, the Abode of Life (1908)—and his contention that the “canals” of Mars are a sign of life and civilization on that planet. He published The Evolution of Worlds in 1909. In 1910 he lectured in London before the Royal Institute and in Paris before the Association Astronomique. He died at Flagstaff, AZ, on the 12th of November, 1916.
