Oscar E. Monnig (September 4, 1902 – May 4, 1999) was an American

amateur astronomer Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers ...

, acknowledged for his contributions to

meteoritics Meteoritics is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a ''meteoriticist''. Scientific research in ...

Private life

Monnig was born in Fort Worth,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, the United States. In 1925 he received a law degree from the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. He worked for the family

dry goods Dry goods is a historic term describing the type of product line a store carries, which differs by region. The term comes from the textile trade, and the shops appear to have spread with the mercantile trade across the British Empire (and forme ...

business and was its president from 1974 to 1981, when it was sold. In 1941 he married Juanita Mickle, who died in 1996. They had no children. Monnig died in the city where he was born on May 4, 1999.

Astronomy

In the 1920s Monnig started to be interested in astronomy. He founded the Texas Observers astronomy club and between 1931 and 1947 he published a monthly newsletter – the ''Texas Observers Bulletin'' – writing especially about issues of amateur astronomers' interest, such as

variable star A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as e ...

meteor A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

s, and the

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...

s. In the late-1920s, Monnig developed an interest in meteorites and their contribution to astronomers' studies on the origins of the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

. He was a founding member of the Society for Research on Meteorites (later renamed

Meteoritical Society The Meteoritical Society is a non-profit scholarly organization founded in 1933 to promote research and education in planetary science with emphasis on studies of meteorites and other extraterrestrial materials that further our understanding of the ...

Meteoritical collection

In the early-1930s he started his own meteoritical collection. After he failed with his requests to be allowed to study meteorites at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, the Field Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, he increased his collecting effort. He questioned witnesses of

meteoroid A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...

detonations or

bolide A bolide is normally taken to mean an exceptionally bright meteor, but the term is subject to more than one definition, according to context. It may refer to any large crater-forming body, or to one that explodes in the atmosphere. It can be a ...

s and organized and financed searching expeditions. He paid 1

dollar Dollar is the name of more than 20 currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, ...

per pound, a price that museums could not match at the time of the Great Depression. Gradually, his collection grew to be one of the largest private collections in the world: it contained about 3,000 specimens from 400 different meteorites. Probably the most valuable were two carbonaceous chondrites, found at

Crescent A crescent shape (, ) is a symbol or emblem used to represent the lunar phase in the first quarter (the "sickle moon"), or by extension a symbol representing the Moon itself. In Hinduism, Lord Shiva is often shown wearing a crescent moon on his ...

, Oklahoma, in 1936 and at Bells, Texas, in 1961. Monnig later decided to donate the collection to

Texas Christian University Texas Christian University (TCU) is a private research university in Fort Worth, Texas. It was established in 1873 by brothers Addison and Randolph Clark as the Add-Ran Male & Female College. It is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciple ...

: he made a series of transfers, between 1976 and 1986. Nowadays, the collection contains over 1,000 different meteorites. In 2003, four years after he died, the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery was opened, exhibiting about 10 per cent of the meteorites to the public. The numbering system Monnig used to label his collection is a topic of great intrigue, as scientists and meteorite specialists believe that Monnig's collection numbers are an "intriguing, perhaps almost magical...a tangible link with researchers and collectors who have gone before us," as stated by Geoff Notkin. Scientists have concluded that it is likely that Monnig used a similar labeling system as Harvey H. Nininger.

Awards

In 1984, Monnig became the first person to win the Texas Star Party's annual 'Lone Stargazer Award' for his accomplishments as an observer in amateur astronomy In 1990, he received the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for his contributions to meteoritics. The

main belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

asteroid 2780 Monnig was named in his honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Monnig, Oscar 1902 births 1999 deaths Amateur astronomers 20th-century American astronomers Collectors People from Fort Worth, Texas American people of German descent Meteorite researchers University of Texas School of Law alumni Use mdy dates from August 2011