PEOPLE IN THE MOON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 118, 22 May 1939, Page 3

PEOPLE IN THE MOON

Over 600 Craters Named

" BO'S WHO in the Moon,” a | remarkable publication just I issued by the< British Astronomical | Association after three years’ research.. I informs us that 609 men and women | have had craters, walled plains, or j mountains on the moon named after I them, and that the names will In j future appear on every map of the moon. • They have been immortalised in the I heavens since the seventeenth cen- ■ tury. chiefly because of their astro- I nomical work, but often because they | have been great scientists, explorers, 1 heroes or philanthropists who have ; aided the observers of the planets. One i interesting fact is that eleven of the | • moon-men and women are still alive, I A twelfth. Mr A. S. Williams, Brighton j solicitor, who discovered stars in his I spare time, knew he was to be immor- J

talised just before his death. His name will live for ever—or until the moon breaks up when it is drawn to within 10.000 miles of the earth in hundreds of millions years’ time—on a crater about ten miles in diameter. Living moon people include a French M.P., two Englishwomen—one of whom has witnessed the total eclipse of the sun in Norway, U.S.A.. Spain, England, Canada and the Mediterranean—a Welshman who built his own telescope at the age of 13, and a Czech schoolmaster. All the large craters and mountains have already been named, but there are still many small ones vacant. They are likely to be. from now' on reserved for lunar observers. But if anyone buys a large telescope—more than Bin

in diameter—and discovers any uncharted crater, he stands a good chance of having it named after him. The “people of the moon” are a very mixed company. Giant figures like Julius Ceaser and Alexandra the Great, are almost side by side with such moderns as:— I An oboe player in a German band. A Lancashire brewer. A successful English stockbroker who devoted his fortune to astronomy. A boy mathematical calculus who studied the infinitesimal calculus when 10 years old. A waif found on the steps of a French church. A doctor who wrote a book describing his discovery of splendid buildings on the moon. An eccentric rich American who, jilted by a miller’s faithless daughter, built the greatest telescope then known and buried himself underneath it. There is a Birmingham on the moon. It is a walled plain called after a nineteenth century Irishman named Bir--1 mingham.