Venetia Phair, who suggested Pluto as a planet’s name, dies at 90
By Robert Barr, Gaea News NetworkFriday, May 8, 2009
Venetia Phair, who named planet Pluto, dies at 90
LONDON — Venetia Phair, who was 11 years old when she suggested Pluto as the name of the newly discovered planet, has died at age 90, her family said.
She died at home in Epsom on April 30, the family said; the cause of death was not disclosed. The family said a funeral would be held on Friday.
Born Venetia Burney, she suggested the name to her grandfather at breakfast in 1930.
“My grandfather, as usual, opened the paper, The Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered. He wondered what it should be called. We all wondered,” she recalled in a short film, “Naming Pluto,” released earlier this year.
“And then I said, ‘why not call it Pluto?’ And the whole thing stemmed from that.”
Her grandfather was Falconer Madan, the retired librarian of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. He relayed the suggestion to his friend Herbert Hall Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford, who on that day was at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, where possible names for the planet were being discussed.
Turner then passed the suggestion to Clyde W. Tombaugh, who made the discovery, at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
When the name was publicly announced on May 1, 1930, Phair said her grandfather rewarded her with a five-pound note. (The same purchasing power today would be about 230 pounds, or $350.)
“This was unheard of then. As a grandfather, he liked to have an excuse for generosity,” she told the British Broadcasting Corp. in 2006.
She was fascinated in astronomy, and recalled playing a game at school using clay lumps to mark out the relative positions of the planets. She was also a keen student of mythology, and knew about Pluto, the Roman name for the Greek god of the underworld, Hades.
“There were practically no names left from classical mythology. Whether I thought about the dark and gloomy Hades, I’m not sure,” she told the BBC.
She tartly rejected any suggestion that the planet was named for the Disney dog, instead of the other way around.
“It has now been satisfactorily proven that the dog was named after the planet, rather than the other way round. So, one is vindicated,” she said.
The International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto in 2006 to a dwarf planet — based on the observation that Pluto was a large chunk in the Kuiper Belt of solar debris.
Phair said she was indifferent about Pluto’s change of status, “though I suppose I would prefer it to remain a planet.”
An asteroid discovered in 1987 was named in her honor: 6235 Burney.
She studied mathematics at Cambridge University, and taught economics and math until retiring in the 1980s.
Her husband Maxwell Phair died in 2006. She is survived by their son, Patrick.
Tags: Astronomy, Bbc, Education, Eu-britain-obit-phair, Europe, European Union, London, Math And Science Education, Maxwell, Mythology, Obituaries, Planets, School Curricula, United Kingdom, Western Europe
June 20, 2009: 11:56 pm
It should be noted that the IAU’s controversial demotion of Pluto is very likely not the last word on the subject and in fact represents only one interpretation in an ongoing debate. Only four percent of the IAU voted on this, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body in orbit around a star. The spherical part is important because objects become spherical when they attain a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning they are large enough for their own gravity to pull them into a round shape. This is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto meets this criterion and is therefore a planet. |
June 4, 2009: 7:13 am
Pluto is still a planet. Only four percent of the IAU voted on the controversial demotion, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. One reason the IAU definition makes no sense is it says dwarf planets are not planets at all! That is like saying a grizzly bear is not a bear, and it is inconsistent with the use of the term “dwarf” in astronomy, where dwarf stars are still stars, and dwarf galaxies are still galaxies. Also, the IAU definition classifies objects solely by where they are while ignoring what they are. If Earth were in Pluto’s orbit, according to the IAU definition, it would not be a planet either. A definition that takes the same object and makes it a planet in one location and not a planet in another is essentially useless. That is why many astronomers, lay people, and educators are either ignoring the demotion entirely or working to get it overturned. |
Laurel Kornfeld