Charles Greeley Abbot

Charles Greeley Abbot was an American astrophysicist, born May 31, 1872 in Wilton, New Hampshire and died December 17, 1973 in Riverdale Park, Maryland at the age of 101, who built some of the earliest working solar-powered devices while studying the sun itself. He joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as an aide in 1895, became its acting director in 1906 and director in 1907 after the death of Samuel Langley, and later served as the fifth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1928 to 1944. Much of his career was devoted to measuring the solar constant and tracking variations in solar radiation in the hope of enabling long-range weather forecasting, and in 1953 he reported a connection between solar variation and planetary climate that he believed could allow climate prediction decades in advance. Alongside this research he built and patented roughly fifteen solar energy devices, including a solar cooker first constructed at Mount Wilson Observatory, a solar boiler and a solar still. He received the Henry Draper Medal in 1910 and the Rumford Medal in 1916, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.