Milton Humason
| Milton Lasell Humason | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 19, 1891 Dodge Center, Minnesota |
| Died | June 18, 1972 (aged 80) Mendocino, California |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | Mount Wilson Observatory |
Milton Lasell Humason (August 19, 1891 – June 18, 1972) was an American astronomer. He was born in Dodge Center, Minnesota.
He dropped out of school and had no formal education past the age of 14. Because he loved the mountains, and Mount Wilson in particular, he became a "mule skinner" taking materials and equipment up the mountain while Mount Wilson Observatory was being built. In 1917, after a short stint on a ranch in La Verne, he became a janitor at the observatory. Out of sheer interest, he volunteered to be a night assistant at the observatory. His technical skill and quiet manner made him a favorite on the mountain. Recognizing his talent, in 1919, George Ellery Hale made him a Mt. Wilson staff member. This was unprecedented, as Humason did not have a Ph.D., or even a high school diploma. He soon proved Hale's judgment correct, as he made several key observational discoveries. He became known as a meticulous observer, obtaining photographs and difficult spectrograms of faint galaxies. His observations played a major role in the development of physical cosmology, including assisting Edwin Hubble in formulating Hubble's law. In 1950 he earned a D.Sc. from Lund University. He retired in 1957.
He discovered Comet C/1961 R1 (Humason), notable for its large perihelion distance.
Due to merest chance, Humason missed discovering Pluto. Eleven years before Clyde Tombaugh, Humason took a set of four photographs in which the image of Pluto appeared. There is persistent speculation that he missed discovering the dwarf planet because it fell on a defect in the photographic plate. This is unlikely, however, given that it appeared in four separate photographs over three different nights.
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