Roger Putnam

Roger Putnam

Roger Lowell Putnam (December 19, 1893 - November 24, 1972) was an American politician and businessman. A member of the prominent Lowell family of Boston, he served as Mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1937 until 1943, and as director of the Economic Stabilization Administration from 1951 until 1952. During his short tenure in federal office, the nation's steelworkers struck—leading President Harry S. Truman to seize the nation's steel mills.

For 40 years, Putnam was also the sole trustee of the Lowell Observatory. During that time, he purchased three new telescopes for the observatory and was instrumental in pushing Lowell astronomers to search for Percival Lowell's theoretical "Planet X"—which led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930.

Read more about Roger Putnam:  Early Life and Education, Role in Discovering Pluto, Political Career, Federal Service, Later Life, Death, Legacy

Famous quotes containing the words roger and/or putnam:

    Draw round beloved and bitter men,
    Draw round and raise a shout;
    The ghost of Roger Casement
    Is beating on the door.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!
    —Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)