Forest Ray Moulton | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | April 29, 1872 |
| Died | December 7, 1952 (1952-12-08) (aged 80) |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Doctoral students | Walter Bartky Edwin Hubble W. D. MacMillan[1] |
Forest Ray Moulton (April 29, 1872 – December 7, 1952) was an Americanastronomer.[2] He was the brother ofHarold G. Moulton, a noted economist.
He was born inLe Roy, Michigan, and was educated atAlbion College. After graduating in 1894 (A.B.), he pursued graduate studies at theUniversity of Chicago and gained aPh.D. in 1899. At the University of Chicago he was associate in astronomy (1898–1900), instructor (1900–03), assistant professor (1903–08), associate professor (1908–12), andprofessor after 1912.[3]
He is noted for being a proponent, along withThomas Chamberlin, of theChamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis that the planets coalesced from smaller bodies they termedplanetesimals. Their hypothesis called for the close passage of another star to trigger this condensation, a concept that has since fallen out of favor.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, some additional small satellites were discovered to be in orbit aroundJupiter. Dr. Moulton proposed that these were actually gravitationally-captured planetesimals. This theory has become well-accepted among astronomers.
Moulton was elected to the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1910,[4] theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1916,[5] and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1919.[6]
The craterMoulton on the Moon, theAdams–Moulton methods for solving differential equations and theMoulton plane in geometry are named after him.
Moulton was a critic of Albert Einstein'stheory of relativity.[7]
He was in charge of ballistics atAberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland duringWorld War I.
According to Craig A. Stephenson:[8]
During the first decades of the 20th century, F. R. Moulton was one of the world's leading mathematical astronomers, and, without doubt, the leading mathematical astronomer in the United States. ... Moulton is today remembered as the author of several introductory books on astronomy, in particular his celebrated text on celestial mechanics; for his role in the formulation of the Chamberlin-Moulton planetesimal hypothesis; and for his work on ballistics in World War I. ... It was in connection with his wartime work on ballistics that he developed the popular method of numerical integration which now bears his name. ... However, for most of his 30-year career at the University of Chicago, it was the three-body problem which held his interest. His research on its periodic solutions began with his 1899 PhD thesis on oscillating satellites and culminated over 20 years later with the publication of hismagnum opus the bookPeriodic Orbits (1920).
In September of 1960,Katherine Johnson used Moulton’s book, An Introduction to Celestial Mechanics, to assist her in calculating howJohn Glenn would return safely to Earth after his orbital flight.[9]This was depicted in the 2016 movie,Hidden Figures.
He became an associate editor of theTransactions of the American Mathematical Society in 1907 and a research associate of theCarnegie Institution in 1908. He served for several terms as secretary of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and edited more than twenty AAAS symposia.[10] Besides various contributions to mathematical and astronomical journals he was the author of:
