Charles Augustus Young
Quick Facts
Biography
Charles Augustus Young (December 15, 1834 – January 4, 1908), one of the foremost solar spectroscopist astronomers in the United States, died of pneumonia after a brief illness, at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on 4 January 1908. He observed solar eclipses and worked on spectroscopy of the Sun. He observed a solar flare with a spectroscope on 3 August 1872, and also noted that it coincided with a magnetic storm on Earth.
Graduated from Dartmouth, he later became a professor there in 1865, remaining until 1877 when he went to Princeton.
He was a successful educator who wrote a popular and widely used series of astronomy textbooks, including Manual of Astronomy. Many years later in 1927, when Henry Norris Russell, Raymond Smith Dugan and John Quincy Stewart wrote their own two-volume textbook, they entitled it Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy.