Venetia Burney

Venetia Katherine Douglas Phair born Burney ( born July 11, 1918 in England; † 30 April 2009 Banstead ) suggested the name of Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930 discovered celestial body Pluto. It was at this time eleven years old and lived in Oxford, England.

Life

Venetia Phair was the daughter of the theologian Charles Fox Burney and his wife Ethel Wordsworth Madan. She was the granddaughter of Falconer Madan (1851-1935) and the great-niece of Henry Madan (1838-1901), who named the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos.

On March 14, 1930, she was sitting with her grandfather at the breakfast table when he read from the Times published an article about the discovery of a new, hitherto nameless planet. Venetia beat spontaneously the name " Pluto " before - an inspiration that sprang from her former employment with Greek mythology and astrology.

My grandfather wrote the proposal to the astronomer Herbert Hall Turner of the University of Oxford, who wore this proposal on the same day in the naming discussion of the Royal Astronomical Society. On May 1, 1930, the name was officially announced.

Later she studied mathematics at Cambridge University and worked as a teacher of mathematics and economics at a girls' school in south west London. In 1947 she married Edward Maxwell Phair, who later became Headmaster of Epsom College was.

In the 2006 debate about Pluto's planetary status Venetia Phair told the BBC that the dispute was largely indifferent to her at her age, even if they probably wish that it would remain a planet.

Sequence names

In 1930, Walt Disney named a new character, a dog that was originally called " Rover " and later companion of Mickey Mouse and other characters from Disney was to due to the discovery of the planet Pluto in Pluto. Also derived from the name of the celestial body, the name of the element plutonium discovered in 1941 and the terms were Plutino of 1996 and Plutoid of 2008 for certain trans-Neptunian objects.

Honors

Got your honor in 1987 by Seiji Ueda and Hiroshi its discoverers Kaneda the asteroid ( 6235 ) Burney its name, as the instrument Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter the spacecraft New Horizons was named in 2006 for the measurement of dust particles after her.

800279
de