William Lowell Putnam any dramatic changes in the Observatory's staff or location. Thus, an Observatory expedition and possibly a permanent move to South America was postponed, effectively establishing the Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Despite his conviction that he should not make any major changes to the Observatory, Putnam did become embroiled in the controversy surrounding T. J. J. See. See was employed at Lowell Observatory at that time, but was both an extremely unpopular man and also regarded as a bad scientist. Three Observatory employees had already resigned due to See's poor treatment of them, and Douglass began working to remove See from
Percival Lowell saddened Lowell, a dedicated pacifist. This, along with some setbacks in his astronomical work (described below), undermined his health and contributed to his death from a stroke on November 12, 1916, aged 61. Lowell is buried on Mars Hill near his observatory. Lowell claimed to "stick to the church" though at least one current author describes him as an agnostic. Lowell became determined to study Mars and astronomy as a full-time career after reading Camille Flammarion's "La planète Mars". He was particularly interested in the canals of Mars, as drawn by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was director of the