The Girl Who Named Pluto by Dennis Brindell Fradin

Author:Dennis Brindell Fradin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Highlights for Children, Inc.
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

January 23, 1930

January 29, 1930

Clyde Tombaugh did not have arrows (as we have here) to point out Pluto. He discovered the planet in these two photographs when he saw that it had moved.

After a minute or two, Venetia announced at the breakfast table, “It might be called Pluto.” Then, for several weeks, she forgot about the new planet.

Venetia didn’t know it, but her grandfather had her suggestion sent to Lowell Observatory. Many other names were sent in, from Atlas to Zeus. Parents asked that the planet be named after their babies. Another name put forth was Percival, for Percival Lowell, the observatory’s founder. Finally, the observatory staff voted. Pluto won. The name suggested by eleven-year-old Venetia Burney was adopted on May 1, 1930. The planet has been Pluto ever since.

Cartoons and Chemistry

There were spin-offs from the name. In September of 1930, a fictional dog was introduced in a Mickey Mouse cartoon. He was named Pluto, like the planet Venetia Burney had named. Ten years later, a new element was discovered. It was named plutonium, for the ninth planet.

In 1996, seventy-eight-year-old Venetia Burney Phair recalled how she felt as a child when she learned that she had named the ninth planet. “Months later, after it was all settled, I was told about it,” she wrote from her home in England. “Of course I was very excited and pleased. Over the years, it has given me a great deal of amusement and pleasure to know that I named Pluto.”

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