Mars fantasist Percival Lowell has last laugh

November sees the centenary of Percival Lowell’s death. 

This Boston businessman- astronomer came from an upper-class family; “Boston is the home of the bean and the cod, where Lowells spoke only to Cabots, while Cabots spoke only to god,” quipped Bill Bryson quoting John Collins Bossidy.

Poor old Lowell was ridiculed for a monumental mistake he made. Eventually, however, he would have the last laugh, becoming the only person to have a planet of the solar system named in his honour.