Charles Greeley Abbot

In 1897, he married Lillian Elvira Moore. She died in 1944, after 46 years of their marriage. They had no children.

In 1954, he married Virginia Andes Johnston. They also had no children.

He died on December 17, 1973 in Riverdale, Maryland, U.S. at the age of 101.

He was born on May 31, 1872 in Wilton, New Hampshire, United States, to Harris Abbot, a farmer and his wife, Caroline Ann Greeley Abbot.

He was the youngest child in his family with an elder brother, Stanley Harris Abbot, and two elder sisters, Ella Caroline Abbot and Florence Hale Abbot.

He was an innovative child and his inventions displayed his talent. He constructed a forge to fix tools, built a water wheel to power a saw, and a bicycle.

He attended several public schools and was finally enrolled at the ‘Phillips Andover Academy’. When he was 13, he dropped out of school to become a carpenter but later returned to complete his high school, which he did in 1890.

Then he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study chemical engineering but later developed an interest towards physics and switched to it. He completed his M.Sc. in Physics in 1895.

In 1895, he started his career as an assistant to Samuel P. Langley, a famous physicist and inventor, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge.

He became a researcher on solar radiations after Langley shifted his attention from solar radiations to aeronautics. He journeyed with Langley on expeditions to North Carolina and Sumatra to observe solar eclipses.

During his expeditions to Algeria, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, and other countries, he established his reputation of being a keen observer and impressed many astronomers with his talent.

After the death of Langley in 1906, he became the acting director of Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and the following year, he was appointed the Director of SAO, a post he held for almost four decades.

In 1918, he was elected as the Assistant Secretary of Smithsonian Institution and executed his duties for proper functioning of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the International Exchange Service and the SAO.

One of his most notable works is the research he conducted to calculate the approximate value of solar constant, the measure of the total solar radiation energy received by the Earth over a given area and time.

He also designed solar heaters and cookers to use for lectures and demonstrations to popularize the importance of solar energy. His extensive work on solar power was the basis of a wide variety of appliances that use solar energy as their power source in today’s world.