Lowell and Barnard Compared

Inspired in part by Plutarch, I have chosen to write the parallel lives of Percival Lowell and Edward Emerson Barnard partly because they were among the most famous astronomers of their time, at least in the U.S., and made many contributions to their fields. But not entirely for that reason. They also had remarkably interesting personalities and lives, and each becomes more clearly defined when set against each other, as a kind of background to the other, a background by which one can see more clearly the figure silhouetted against it.