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Kenneth Edgeworth
Kenneth Essex Edgeworth DSO MC (26 February 1880 – 10 October 1972) was an Irish army officer, engineer, economist and independent theoretical astronomer. He was born in Street, County Westmeath. Edgeworth is best known for proposing the existence of a disc of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune in the 1930s. Observations later confirmed the existence of the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt in 1992. Those distant solar system bodies, including Pluto, Eris and Makemake, are now grouped into the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, or Kuiper belt.
Edgeworth was born on 26 February 1880 at Daramona House Street, County Westmeath. His parents were Elizabeth Dupré (née Wilson) and land agent Thomas Newcomen Edgeworth, both of Anglo-Irish ancestry. He was from one of 'the archetypal gentleman literary and scientific families' (McFarland, 1996).
His father's family was from Kilshruley, Ballinalee, County Longford near Edgeworthstown, whose estates were the seats of his ancestors. William Wilson, his uncle on his mother's side and the owner of Daramona House, built an observatory and workshop there and with George Minchin and George Fitzgerald made various types of observations, including pioneering photometric measurements of starlight. Edgeworth's family moved to the estate at Kilshruley four years after his birth. It had 'Grubb 12-inch' and '24-inch reflectors' which his uncle had acquired from Sir Howard Grubb of Dublin a year after he went on an expedition to Algeria to observe the 1870 total eclipse, at just age 19. He remained a regular visitor to the observatory, meeting Wilson's scientific friends George Minchin and George Fitzgerald. His observations included the 1882 transit of Venus. Later in Edgeworth's life he devoted his autobiography to them. It was his uncle who proposed Edgeworth to the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).
After residing at Daramona, Edgeworth's parents moved to Ardglas House and then to Mount Murray, near Lough Owel. After about four years at Mount Murray, they moved to the family home at Kilshruley, about 7 miles (11 km) miles from Edgeworthstown to join Kenneth Essex's grandfather, the retired clergyman Essex Edgeworth. At Kilshruley, Kenneth Essex developed his engineering skills in his father's well-equipped workshop, building small engines, and also experimenting with fireworks and photography.
When aged 17, Edgeworth attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, London, where he won the Pollock Medal for best cadet in 1898. He also attended the Royal School of Military Engineering at Chatham and served a commission in the Corps of Royal Engineers in Egypt.
Posted to South Africa, he took part in the Second Boer War and was promoted to lieutenant on 3 July 1901. Following the end of the war he left Cape Town on the SS Englishman in late September 1902, and arrived at Southampton in late October, when he was posted at Chatham. He later served in Somaliland and Dublin. In the First World War he served in Royal Corps of Signals to maintain communications in France, was mentioned in dispatches three times and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Military Cross.
In 1902, Edgeworth's uncle, William E. Wilson, put forward his nephew for election to the Royal Astronomical Society. Edgeworth was elected the following year. At the meeting, one of his papers was read. He studied international economics during the Great Depression and wrote five books about it during the 1930s and 1940s. He also wrote about the use of turf as a fuel.
Influenced by his uncle's former astronomical endeavors, he published scientific papers (at least from 1939) on the Solar System, star formation, red dwarf stars and astronomical redshifts. He said in 1938 that Pluto (discovered eight years earlier by Clyde Tombaugh) was too small to be a planet but was likely a large example of the original material of the Solar System. In the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, he published The Evolution of Our Planetary System in 1943 (the same year that he was elected to the British Astronomical Association (BAA)), with a key reference to a mass of comets existing past Neptune. He was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1948. In 1949, he followed his 1943 paper with The Origin and Evolution of the Solar System. He suggested that there was a huge number of small bodies at a great distance, with infrequent clustering limiting their size but the occasional inward cometary visitor. In 1950, Jan Oort published his paper in which the Oort cloud was put forward. A year after that, Gerard Kuiper presented his paper at the 50th-anniversary symposium of Yerkes Observatory. It is not known why he did not refer to Edgeworth's papers. The Edgeworth-Kuiper belt has been most frequently referred to as the Kuiper belt, which has caused a dispute:
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Kenneth Edgeworth
Kenneth Essex Edgeworth DSO MC (26 February 1880 – 10 October 1972) was an Irish army officer, engineer, economist and independent theoretical astronomer. He was born in Street, County Westmeath. Edgeworth is best known for proposing the existence of a disc of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune in the 1930s. Observations later confirmed the existence of the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt in 1992. Those distant solar system bodies, including Pluto, Eris and Makemake, are now grouped into the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, or Kuiper belt.
Edgeworth was born on 26 February 1880 at Daramona House Street, County Westmeath. His parents were Elizabeth Dupré (née Wilson) and land agent Thomas Newcomen Edgeworth, both of Anglo-Irish ancestry. He was from one of 'the archetypal gentleman literary and scientific families' (McFarland, 1996).
His father's family was from Kilshruley, Ballinalee, County Longford near Edgeworthstown, whose estates were the seats of his ancestors. William Wilson, his uncle on his mother's side and the owner of Daramona House, built an observatory and workshop there and with George Minchin and George Fitzgerald made various types of observations, including pioneering photometric measurements of starlight. Edgeworth's family moved to the estate at Kilshruley four years after his birth. It had 'Grubb 12-inch' and '24-inch reflectors' which his uncle had acquired from Sir Howard Grubb of Dublin a year after he went on an expedition to Algeria to observe the 1870 total eclipse, at just age 19. He remained a regular visitor to the observatory, meeting Wilson's scientific friends George Minchin and George Fitzgerald. His observations included the 1882 transit of Venus. Later in Edgeworth's life he devoted his autobiography to them. It was his uncle who proposed Edgeworth to the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).
After residing at Daramona, Edgeworth's parents moved to Ardglas House and then to Mount Murray, near Lough Owel. After about four years at Mount Murray, they moved to the family home at Kilshruley, about 7 miles (11 km) miles from Edgeworthstown to join Kenneth Essex's grandfather, the retired clergyman Essex Edgeworth. At Kilshruley, Kenneth Essex developed his engineering skills in his father's well-equipped workshop, building small engines, and also experimenting with fireworks and photography.
When aged 17, Edgeworth attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, London, where he won the Pollock Medal for best cadet in 1898. He also attended the Royal School of Military Engineering at Chatham and served a commission in the Corps of Royal Engineers in Egypt.
Posted to South Africa, he took part in the Second Boer War and was promoted to lieutenant on 3 July 1901. Following the end of the war he left Cape Town on the SS Englishman in late September 1902, and arrived at Southampton in late October, when he was posted at Chatham. He later served in Somaliland and Dublin. In the First World War he served in Royal Corps of Signals to maintain communications in France, was mentioned in dispatches three times and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Military Cross.
In 1902, Edgeworth's uncle, William E. Wilson, put forward his nephew for election to the Royal Astronomical Society. Edgeworth was elected the following year. At the meeting, one of his papers was read. He studied international economics during the Great Depression and wrote five books about it during the 1930s and 1940s. He also wrote about the use of turf as a fuel.
Influenced by his uncle's former astronomical endeavors, he published scientific papers (at least from 1939) on the Solar System, star formation, red dwarf stars and astronomical redshifts. He said in 1938 that Pluto (discovered eight years earlier by Clyde Tombaugh) was too small to be a planet but was likely a large example of the original material of the Solar System. In the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, he published The Evolution of Our Planetary System in 1943 (the same year that he was elected to the British Astronomical Association (BAA)), with a key reference to a mass of comets existing past Neptune. He was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1948. In 1949, he followed his 1943 paper with The Origin and Evolution of the Solar System. He suggested that there was a huge number of small bodies at a great distance, with infrequent clustering limiting their size but the occasional inward cometary visitor. In 1950, Jan Oort published his paper in which the Oort cloud was put forward. A year after that, Gerard Kuiper presented his paper at the 50th-anniversary symposium of Yerkes Observatory. It is not known why he did not refer to Edgeworth's papers. The Edgeworth-Kuiper belt has been most frequently referred to as the Kuiper belt, which has caused a dispute: