Research Article: Douglass, Andrew Ellicott (1867-1962)

American astronomer and archaeologist

Andrew E. Douglass invented and named dendrochronology, the technique of counting and studying the rings in tree trunks to determine not only the ages of trees, but also the past climatological, geological, agricultural, social, and economic conditions of the local area.

Born in Windsor, Vermont, on July 5, 1867, Douglass received his bachelor's degree with honors in 1889 from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. After working five years for the Harvard University Observatory, including an expedition to Arequippa, Peru, from 1891 to 1893 to establish Harvard's Southern Hemisphere Observatory, he accepted the offer of astronomer Percival Lowell (1855–1916) to build an observatory in the American Southwest. They founded Lowell Observatory in 1894 by erecting an 18-inch telescope on a mesa outside Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell was preoccupied with Mars, and some historians argue that Lowell may have skewed Douglass' data in order to support his theories of...
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