Charles Hugh Smiley (September 6, 1903 – July 26, 1977) was an American astronomer and academic, and the author of a column on astronomy, “Planets and Stars” (''Providence Journal'', 1938–1957). The main belt

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

1613 Smiley Events January–June * January 11 – Workers in a sandpit in the Dauphiné region of France discover the skeleton of what is alleged to be a 30-foot tall man (the remains, it is supposed, of the giant Teutobochus, a legendary ...

is named after him. He was considered “one of the world’s leading authorities on

eclipses An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

.”�
D.H. Kelley, “Charles Hugh Smiley, 1903-1977,” ''Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada'', Vol. 72, p.46.
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Biography

Born in

Camden, Missouri Camden is a city in southern Ray County, Missouri, and part of the Kansas City metropolitan area within the United States. The population was 175 at the 2020 census. History Camden was platted in 1838. The community most likely was named after ...

, he attended

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

and

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

, where he earned a mathematics degree. He received an MA in mathematics from Berkeley (1925) and a PhD from the same university (1927). He taught mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1927-9) and worked at the

Royal Greenwich Observatory The Royal Observatory, Greenwich (ROG; known as the Old Royal Observatory from 1957 to 1998, when the working Royal Greenwich Observatory, RGO, temporarily moved south from Greenwich to Herstmonceux) is an observatory situated on a hill in G ...

as a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

(1929–30). He worked as a professor of mathematics at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

from 1930 onwards. He was director of

Ladd Observatory Ladd Observatory is an astronomical observatory at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1891 it was primarily designed for student instruction and also research. The facility operated a regional timekeeping service. It was re ...

and served as chairman of the Department of Astronomy from 1938 until his retirement. Smiley led expeditions to South America, Canada, Asia, and the US to study solar eclipses and observed the solar eclipse of July 20, 1963 from a U.S. Air Force F-104D Starfighter

supersonic aircraft A supersonic aircraft is an aircraft capable of supersonic flight, that is, flying faster than the speed of sound (Mach number 1). Supersonic speed, Supersonic aircraft were developed in the second half of the twentieth century. Supersonic airc ...

that was "racing the moon's shadow" at extending the duration of totality. He also conducted several expeditions between 1947 and 1952 to study “atmospheric refraction at low angular altitudes.” He also studied the

Mayan calendar The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had ...

, and “was able to date the Mayan Codices of Dresden, Paris, and Madrid from astronomical dates which they contained.” When

1570 Brunonia 1570 Brunonia, provisional designation , is a stony asteroid of the Koronis family from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 9 October 1948, by Belgian astronomer Sylvain Arend at the Royal Obser ...

was discovered on October 9, 1948, by

Sylvain Julien Victor Arend Sylvain Julien Victor Arend (6 August 1902 – 18 February 1992) was a Belgian astronomer born in Robelmont, Luxembourg province, Belgium. His main interest was astrometry. Together with Georges Roland, he discovered the bright comet C/1956 R ...

at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in

Uccle Uccle () or Ukkel () is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. In common with all of Brussels' municipalities, it is legally bilingual (French–Dutch). It is generally considered an affluent area of the city a ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

, Arend wrote to Smiley:

— This planet is named in honor of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. ... Its astronomical history dates back to the transit of Venus in 1769, observed by Prof. Benjamin West. Two local streets are named Planet and Transit. The naming of the planet is also a tribute to the international reputation of Dr. Smiley.

References

External links

* (see WorldCat, below) {{DEFAULTSORT:Smiley, Charles Hugh American astronomers 1903 births 1977 deaths University of California, Berkeley alumni