The New Student's Reference Work/Young, Charles Augustus

Young, Charles Augustus, a distinguished American astronomer, was born at Hanover N. H., Dec. 15, 1834. He was educated at Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1853.  After teaching classics for three years at Phillips Andover Academy, he went to Western Reserve College in Ohio, where he taught astronomy, natural philosophy and mathematics.  For three months during the Civil War he served in the 85th Ohio Volunteers.  At the close of the war he was appointed to the chair of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, a position which his father had held some years earlier.  During the following 12 years Professor Young made a brilliant series of discoveries in solar physics, among which may be mentioned the “reversing layer” of the solar atmosphere, observed at the Spanish eclipse of 1870, the rotation period of the sun measured on Döppler’s principle, the bright line spectrum of the chromosphere (1872) and the motion and forms of solar prominences.  In 1877 he was called to the chair of astronomy at Princeton University. He was the highest living authority on the sun, and in 1906 was awarded a Carnegie old-age pension for his brilliant services to science.  It is needless to say that he received many honors, as election to the National Academy of Sciences, degrees and honorary memberships.  His published works include The Sun, General Astronomy, Lessons in Astronomy etc.  He died January 4, 1908.