Percival Lowell Percival Lowell Percival Lawrence Lowell (; March 13, 1855 – November 12, 1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. Percival Lowell was born on March 13, 1855, in Boston, Massachusetts, the first son of Augustus Lowell and Katherine Bigelow Lowell. A member of the Brahmin Lowell family, his siblings included the poet Amy Lowell, the educator and legal scholar Abbott Lawrence Lowell,
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