For the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police from 1991 to 2001, see Charles Pollard

Charles Pollard

Sir Charles Pollard, QPM was Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police from 1991 to 2001.Pollard was educated at Oundle School and began his career in the police force at the age of 19 as a constable in the Metropolitan Police. He then undertook the accelerated promotions course at Bramshill Police...

Charles Pollard Olivier (1884–August 14, 1975) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

.

Charles grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Charlottesville is an independent city geographically surrounded by but separate from Albemarle County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.The official population estimate for...

, and he lived close to the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

. In 1901 he became an assistant at the nearby Leander McCormick Observatory, and in 1905 he was Vanderbilt fellow at the observatory. He completed his Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in astronomy by 1911, with a dissertation disproving the existence of stationary meteor radiants.

In 1911 Olivier founded the American Meteor Society

American Meteor Society

The American Meteor Society, Ltd. is a non-profit scientific organization established to encourage and support the research activities of both amateur and professional astronomers who are interested in the field of Meteor Astronomy...

 to perform visual observations of random meteor

METEOR

METEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...

s as well as meteor showers. It was created as an offshoot from the American Astronomical Society

American Astronomical Society

The American Astronomical Society is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC...

. Along with the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 astronomer William F. Denning, Olivier pioneered the scientific visual study of meteors.

From 1912 until 1914 he was professor of astronomy at the Agnes Scott College

Agnes Scott College

Agnes Scott College is a private undergraduate college in the United States. Agnes Scott's campus lies in downtown Decatur, Georgia, nestled inside the perimeter of the bustling metro-Atlanta area....

 in Decatur, Georgia

Decatur, Georgia

Decatur is a city in, and county seat of, DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. With a population of 19,335 in the 2010 census, the city is sometimes assumed to be larger since multiple zip codes in unincorporated DeKalb County bear the Decatur name...

. He also served as a summer volunteer at the Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the University of Chicago in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The observatory, which calls itself "the birthplace of modern astrophysics," was founded in 1897 by George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles T. Yerkes...

. He returned to the University of Virginia in 1914 as an assistant professor, and was hired onto the McCormick Observatory staff to work on parallax

Parallax

Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. The term is derived from the Greek παράλλαξις , meaning "alteration"...

 measurements. In 1918 he left to serve in the world war

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

Following the war he became director of the Flower Observatory at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 in 1928, resigning his position as a professor at Virginia. By 1945 he was Chairman of the University of Pennsylvania department of astronomy. During the 1940s he encouraged the university to sell off the land to pay for a new observatory. This was finally completed in 1956 and was named the Flower and Cook Observatory.

Awards and honors

• The AMS gives a Dr. Charles P. Olivier Award each year to an amateur astronomer in the field of meteor science.
• The crater Olivier
  Olivier (crater)
  Olivier is an old, eroded crater that is located in the northern hemisphere on the far side of the Moon. It lies in a region of dense cratering on all sides. To the east-southeast is a younger but comparably sized crater named Störmer...
  
   on the Moon
  Moon
  The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
  
  is named after him.

External links