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
William Lowell Putnam become trustee. After Gus's death, William's second son, Roger, became trustee. In 1927, Elizabeth Lowell Putnam established the William Lowell Putnam Intercollegiate Memorial Fund in order to begin a college-level mathematics competition, the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. This contest, which continues to this day, began in 1935 under the direction of the Mathematical Association of America. Putnam's grandson by the same name, William Lowell Putnam, born 1924, was a geologist, businessman, and climber, and served as the sole trustee of Lowell observatory from 1987-2013. William Lowell Putnam William Lowell Putnam II (November 22, 1861 – June 1923) (more commonly