Research topic: Clyde William Tombaugh

Clyde William Tombaugh , 1906-97, American astronomer, b. Streator, Ill. Although lacking formal training or a college degree, he was hired in 1929 as an assistant by the Lowell Observatory to continue the search for a planet beyond Neptune, which had been initiated by Percival Lowell . Tombaugh used a blink microscope to compare photographs of a small part of the night sky and detect the planet. After ten months of painstaking comparisons, on Feb. 18, 1930, he found Pluto (now regarded as a Kuiper belt object [see comet ] and a dwarf planet) in the constellation Gemini. After... Read more