Percival Lowell by David Strauss, Harvard, £30.95, ISBN 0674002911
A GOOD biography keeps two elements in delicate balance: what they did, and
why they did it. David Strauss, a professor of history at Kalamazoo College in
Michigan, has got it exactly right in Percival Lowell. Lowell, whose career
straddled the 19th and 20th centuries, was one of astronomy’s brightest stars.
Springing from an extremely rich East Coast clan, he was clever, ambitious and
cultured. After the requisite liberal education at Harvard and a few years
successfully playing the stock market with the family money, he spent 11 years
travelling in…
