Kenneth Edgeworth | |
|---|---|
 Kenneth Essex Edgeworth in January 1905 | |
| Born | 26 February 1880  |
| Died | 10 October 1972 (aged 92) |
Kenneth Essex EdgeworthDSO MC (26 February 1880 – 10 October 1972) was an Irish army officer, engineer, economist and independent theoretical astronomer.[1] He was born inStreet, County Westmeath.[2] Edgeworth is best known for proposing the existence of a disc of bodies beyond the orbit ofNeptune in the 1930s. Observations later confirmed the existence of theEdgeworth-Kuiper belt in 1992. Those distant solar system bodies, includingPluto,Eris andMakemake, are now grouped into the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, or Kuiper belt.[3]
Edgeworth was born on 26 February 1880 at Daramona HouseStreet, County Westmeath. His parents were Elizabeth Dupré ((née Wilson) 1852-1929) and land agent Thomas Newcomen Edgeworth (1850–1931) both ofAnglo-Irish ancestry. He was from one of 'the archetypal gentleman literary and scientific families' (McFarland, 1996).[4][5][6]
His father's family was fromKilshruley,Ballinalee,County Longford nearEdgeworthstown, whose estates were the seats of his ancestors.William Wilson, his uncle on his mother's side and the owner of Daramona House, built an observatory and workshop there and withGeorge Minchin andGeorge Fitzgerald made various types of observations, including pioneering photometric measurements of starlight.[7][8] Edgeworth's family moved to the estate at Kilshruley four years after his birth. It had 'Grubb 12-inch' and '24-inch reflectors' which his uncle had acquired from Sir Howard Grubb of Dublin a year after he went on an expedition to Algeria to observe the 1870 total eclipse, at just age 19.[1][9] He remained a regular visitor to the observatory, meeting Wilson's scientific friends George Minchin and George Fitzgerald. His observations included the1882 transit of Venus. Later in Edgeworth's life he devoted his autobiography to them.[10][4][11][12][13] It was his uncle who proposed Edgeworth to theRoyal Astronomical Society (RAS).[14][1]
After residing at Daramona, Edgeworth's parents moved to Ardglas House and then to Mount Murray, near Lough Owel. After about four years at Mount Murray, they moved to the family home at Kilshruley, about 7 miles (11 km) miles from Edgeworthstown to join Kenneth Essex's grandfather, the retired clergyman Essex Edgeworth. At Kilshruley, Kenneth Essex developed his engineering skills in his father's well-equipped workshop, building small engines, and also experimenting with fireworks and photography.[14]
When aged 17, Edgeworth attended theRoyal Military Academy, Woolwich,London, where he won thePollock Medal for best cadet in 1898. He also attended theRoyal School of Military Engineering atChatham and served a commission in the Corps ofRoyal Engineers inEgypt.[15]
Posted to South Africa, he took part in theSecond Boer War and was promoted tolieutenant on 3 July 1901. Following the end of the war he leftCape Town on the SSEnglishman in late September 1902, and arrived atSouthampton in late October, when he was posted at Chatham.[16] He later served inSomaliland andDublin. In theFirst World War he served inRoyal Corps of Signals to maintain communications in France, was mentioned in dispatches three times and was awarded theDistinguished Service Order (DSO) and theMilitary Cross.[17]
In 1902, Edgeworth's uncle, William E. Wilson, put forward his nephew for election to the Royal Astronomical Society. Edgeworth was elected the following year. At the meeting, one of his papers was read.[18]He studiedinternational economics during theGreat Depression and wrote five books about it during the 1930s and 1940s. He also wrote about the use ofturf as a fuel.
Influenced by his uncle's former astronomical endeavors, he published scientific papers (at least from 1939) on theSolar System,star formation,red dwarf stars and astronomicalredshifts. He said in 1938 thatPluto (discovered eight years earlier byClyde Tombaugh) was too small to be a planet but was likely a large example of the original material of the Solar System. In theJournal of the British Astronomical Association, he publishedThe Evolution of Our Planetary System in 1943 (the same year that he was elected to theBritish Astronomical Association (BAA)), with a key reference to a mass of comets existing past Neptune. He was elected to theRoyal Irish Academy in 1948. In 1949, he followed his 1943 paper withThe Origin and Evolution of the Solar System. He suggested that there was a huge number of small bodies at a great distance, with infrequent clustering limiting their size but the occasional inward cometary visitor. In 1950,Jan Oort published his paper in which theOort cloud was put forward. A year after that,Gerard Kuiper presented his paper at the 50th-anniversary symposium ofYerkes Observatory. It is not known why he did not refer to Edgeworth's papers.[19][20][21][22] The Edgeworth-Kuiper belt has been most frequently referred to as the Kuiper belt, which has caused a dispute:
During 1916, Edgeworth took a leave of absence. During this time he met Isabel Mary, the widow of Arthur F. Eves. The pair got engaged and married on 23 August 1917. Edgeworth retired from the military in 1926, as alieutenant-colonel. Sometime during his military years, he became a member of theInstitution of Electrical Engineers. He became the chief engineer in the Sudanese Department of Posts and Telegraphs department for five years inSudan before finally returning home to Ireland. He also wrote a paper on thermionic generators around this time.[24] In 1931, he returned to his parents' home Cherbury, inBooterstown.[10] In his retirement, Edgeworth published four books on economics and over a 23-year period published a number of letters and papers which culminated in his bookThe Earth, the Planets and the Stars: Their Birth and Evolution (1961). However, before this publication, in 1943, Edgeworth wrote a piece for theJournal of the British Astronomical Association which suggested the idea of a vast reservoir of cometary material beyond Neptune's orbit. This was later validated as ‘Kuiper's Belt,’ and despite suggesting it in the 1940s, Edgeworth's astronomical findings were not recognised until 1995.
Edgeworth published his autobiography, at age 85, in 1965,Jack of all Trades: The Story of My Life.[9] Kenneth Edgeworth died in Dublin on 10 October 1972, at the age of 92.[25]
Edgeworth published on topics of engineering, economics and astronomy. His known books and papers include the following:[26][27]
Theasteroid3487 Edgeworth (1978 UF), a main-belt asteroid discovered on 28 October 1978 by H. L. Giclas at Flagstaff, is named in his honour.[24]
He was honoured again on 3 February 2021 by theInternational Astronomical Union when the craterEdgeworth onPluto was named after him .[28]
He left an important legacy in the field of astronomy. In 1943 he proposed a reservoir of icy objects beyond Neptune.[29] Eight years later the astronomer Gerard Kuiper came up with a more detailed prediction. Those distant solar bodies included Pluto,Eris (dwarf planet) andMakemake onto the Kuiper belt. Some astronomers, however, name it the Edgeworth – Kuiper belt. In 1948 he was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy, but it was not until 1995 that his research was fully recognised.[30] He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1903 and belonged to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1943.
Edgeworth had such an interest in star formation and the development of theSolar System, he wrote a paper specifically on the "Origin and the Evolution of the Solar System"[31] which continued his research of space research beyond Neptune. More recently, the Edgeworth – Kuiper belt has influenced many astronomers to read more into the demotion of Pluto as a planet.
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