How a wealthy amateur astronomer accidentally invented the modern Martian alien
Percival Lowell was a man of immense means and imagination who turned his gaze toward Mars. By interpreting blurry surface markings as an ancient network of canals, he convinced the public that intelligent life existed on the Red Planet, forever shaping the trajectory of science fiction and planetary science.
Born into the prominent Brahmin Lowell family in 1855, Percival Lowell was a polymath who spent his early adulthood managing a cotton mill and traveling through Korea and Japan. However, his life shifted in 1893 after he read Camille Flammarion's work on Mars. Inspired by the observations of Giovanni Schiaparelli, Lowell used his personal wealth to establish the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He specifically chose the site for its high altitude and clear skies, pioneering the practice of locating observatories in remote, elevated regions for optimal image quality.
For over a decade, Lowell meticulously documented what he perceived as a complex system of canals and oases on Mars. He theorized that these were the desperate engineering projects of an advanced civilization struggling to survive on a drying, dying world. While the public was captivated by this vision, the scientific community remained deeply skeptical. Later observations, including those from the 60-inch telescope at Mount Wilson in 1909, suggested these features were likely geological. NASA's Mariner missions in the 1960s finally confirmed that the canals were an optical illusion, possibly exacerbated by psychological factors or the misinterpretation of the Italian word 'canale'.
Lowell’s influence extended far beyond his astronomical errors. His vivid descriptions of a dying Martian civilization provided the foundational blueprint for science fiction classics like H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and works by Ray Bradbury and Robert A. Heinlein. Furthermore, his relentless search for a hypothetical 'Planet X'—driven by his belief that gravity from an unseen body was perturbing the orbits of Uranus and Neptune—led his observatory to capture the first images of Pluto in 1915. Although the Planet X theory was later disproved by more accurate mass measurements of Neptune, Lowell’s dedication to the search remains a defining chapter in the history of planetary exploration.
Source: Percival Lowell
