Armin Otto Leuschner
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Armin Otto Leuschner (January 16, 1868 – April 22, 1953) was an American astronomer and educator.<ref name="springer" />
Early life and education
Leuschner was born on January 16, 1868, in Detroit, Michigan,<ref name=Marquis>LEUSCHNER, Armin Otto, in Marquis Who's Who in America, 1901-1902 edition; via archive.org</ref> but raised in Germany. He returned to the United States for university studies, graduating from the University of Michigan in 1888 with a degree in mathematics. Leuschner then became the first graduate student at Lick Observatory, but due to conflicts with his advisor, Lick director Edward S. Holden, he left Lick before finishing his Ph.D. Leuschner subsequently returned to Germany and attended the University of Berlin, where in 1897 he earned his doctorate with a highly praised thesis on the orbits of comets.
Career
Leuschner returned to California as an associate professor in astronomy at University of California, Berkeley, where he remained for over half a century. He founded an observatory there for student instruction, later renamed in his honor Leuschner Observatory. Together with Lick director James E. Keeler, Leuschner shaped the combined graduate program at Berkeley and Lick into one of the nation's foremost centers of astronomical education. Leuschner's own research continued to focus on the orbits of asteroids and comets; this subject required tremendous amounts of detailed computation, which made the work well-suited to be shared with a long series of students, many of whom went on to successful astronomical careers of their own. More than sixty students received their doctorate under Leuschner's guidance.
In 1913, Leuschner became dean of the entire Graduate School at Berkeley, and later was appointed head of all World War I related training at the university.
He was a founding member of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, served a term as the president of the American Association of University Professors, and chaired the International Astronomical Union's committee on comets and minor planets for two decades.
Leuschner was one of the first astronomers to dispute Pluto as being Planet X as predicted by Lowell.<ref name=lauch /> By 1932 he was already suggesting that Pluto had a mass less than the Earth, and that the discovery of Pluto was an accidental by-product of the Lowell search.<ref name=Leuschner1932 />
Honors
Awards
- James Craig Watson Medal (1916)
- Order of the North Star, Sweden (1924)
- Bruce Medal (1936)<ref name="Sonoma" />
- Rittenhouse Medal (1937)
- Halley Lecturer, University of Oxford (1938)
Honors
- Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1913)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- Member of the American Philosophical Society (1924)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Named after him
- Leuschner (crater) on the Moon
- Leuschner Observatory
- Main-belt asteroid 1361 Leuschneria<ref name="springer" />
- Asteroid 718 Erida is named after his daughter Erida Leuschner.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
References
External links
- Denies Planet Really Found (Sarasota Herald April 15, 1930)
- Armin Otto Leuschner papers, 1875–1951 at The Bancroft Library
- National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
- Portrait of Armin Otto Leuschner from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections Template:Webarchive
- Pages with broken file links
- 1868 births
- 1953 deaths
- American astronomers
- University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni
- Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
- University of California, Berkeley faculty
- Order of the Polar Star
- Presidents of the American Association of University Professors
- Members of the American Philosophical Society