Frank K. Edmondson

Frank K. Edmondson (August 1, 1912 – December 8, 2008) was an American astronomer. Edmondson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up in Seymour, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University in 1933 and received a fellowship to work at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he stayed until 1935, working as an observing assistant to Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the dwarf planet Pluto. After earning his Ph.D. under the direction of B... more

Frank K. Edmondson (August 1, 1912 – December 8, 2008) was an American astronomer. Edmondson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up in Seymour, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University in 1933 and received a fellowship to work at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he stayed until 1935, working as an observing assistant to Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the dwarf planet Pluto. After earning his Ph.D. under the direction of Bart Bok at Harvard University in 1937, Edmondson returned to Indiana University as a faculty member in the department of astronomy. In 1944, he become the department's chair, a position he held until 1978. An early accomplishment of Edmondson's was the creation of the Indiana Asteroid Program, a photographic program to locate asteroids that were "lost" when systematic observations were interrupted by World War II. He also negotiated the donation of the privately-owned Goethe Link Observatory near Brooklyn, Indiana to Indiana University. Nearly... less