Arthur Hoag

Arthur Allen Hoag (1921-1999) was an American astronomer most famous for his discovery of Hoag's object in 1950. He was the son of Harvard Medical School, Cornell, and University of Michigan faculty member Lynne Arthur Hoag and wife Wylma Wood Hoag. He had two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and a son named Tom. His mother and sister Mary (aged 3) died on June 1, 1926 when the Washington Irving was rammed by an oil barge and sunk on the North River.

The 3225 Hoag asteroid discovered by Carolyn and E. M. Shoemaker was named after him. He received his PhD in Astronomy from Harvard in 1953 under Bart Bok. He was director of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona from 1977. He was noted for his work in photoelectric and photographic photometry. He also developed astronomical instruments. He researched quasistellar sources.