Bio- Asaph Hall

Dino Bever

Mr. Dacey

Astronomy Honors Period. 5

March 23, 2014

Asaph Hall

            Asaph Hall the 3^rd was born on the 15^th of October in 1829 in Goshen, Connecticut.  Asaph died the 22^nd of November, 1907 in Annapolis, Maryland.  He was forced to grow up early as a child as his father died at the age of 13, so he had to help provide for his family. Hall’s education suffered as he dropped out of school at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a carpenter. Asaph Hall in his later years in his life had four children with his wife Angeline Hall, who happened to be his ex-Geometry teacher/ German teacher whilst he attended the Central College in McGrawville. His four children were Asaph Hall Jr. who would go on to follow in his father’ footsteps becoming a famous astronomer, Samuel Stickney Hall, a life insurance worker, Angelo Hall a professor of mathematics at the US Naval Academy, and Percival Hall who became the president of Gallaudet University.

 Asaph Hall enrolled at the Central College in McGrwaville, New York, studying mathematics; only for a brief period of time though, as he quickly found work at Harvard working in its observatory.   For almost being completely self-taught in the arts of physics and astronomy Hall made great leaps in many subjects, publishing almost 500 papers. His papers covering a broad range of subjects such as: double stars, Mercury’s perihelion, natural satellites, the mass of Mars, soar and stellar parallax, Saturn’s rings, and even the value of Pi. In 1877 on the 15^th and the 17^th of August, with the assistance of the USNO 26-inch telescope, the largest refracting telescope in the world at that time, Asaph Hall discovered Phobos and Deimos, the two Martian moons.

For his discoveries Hall was given the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1879, in 1893 the Arago Medal, and in 1896 he was made a chevalier in the Ordre national de Legion d’honneur.  His work on Pi would later go on to be used in the Manhattan project by Nicholas Metropolis, being renamed the Monte Carlo method. Due to his discoveries and life’s works Hall was honored with having named after him the Hall crater on the moon as well as the Hall crater on the Martian Moon Phobos, in addition to asteroid 3299 Hall.