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Article | Ireland | VIEW SOURCE |
Kenneth Edgeworth was the son of a Gentleman Justice of the Peace, born in Streete, Co. Westmeath on the 26th of February 1880 (though his birth certificate gives no first name). His parents were John Edgeworth and Lizzie Wilson of Granard, Co. Longford (married in 1878). Edgeworth was trained as a miltary engineer at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He served in a number of locations around the world in this capacity, including Dublin, Sudan, South Africa, and Egypt, amongst others. After holding a number of high ranking posts in the military, Edgeworth eventually returned to his native Ireland, settling in Booterstown, Co. Dublin, in a former family home.
It was during his years of military retirement in Dublin that Edgeworth's greatest contributions to the world of science and engineering were made, he also published four books on economics, but it is his scientific explorations that put his name in the history books. In retirement, Edgeworth turned his attentions to theoretical astronomy. He spent 23 years publishing a number of papers on the topic and eventually compiled his years of work into a book entitled The Earth, The Planets, and the Stars: Their Birth and Evolution which was released in 1961. The focus of his work was star formation and the origins of the solar system. One of Edgeworth's theories that made it into the public domain and beyond the confines of the theoretical astronomy discussoin lounge, was that Pluto may not be a planet at all. He stated that it was simply too small to be a planet and that it may instead be a dwarf planet. He also was one of the first to suggest that perhaps Pluto was not the outlier of our solar system, that there was a large amount of cometary material beyond Pluto's orbit. This would later be proven with the discovery of the Kuiper Belt.
In 1903, Edgeworth was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, he was also a member of the British Astronomical Association and the Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Kenneth Edgeworth died in Dublin on the 10th of October 1972 at the age of 92.
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| Date of Birth | 26th Feb 1880 | VIEW SOURCE |
| Date of Death | 10th Oct 1972 | |
