Astronomer Kenneth L(inn) Franklin died 18 June 2007 from complications following heart surgery. Born on 25 March 1923 in Alameda, California, he discovered the first noise to come from another planet, and invented a watch to tell time in lunations (for Moon walkers). Until his death, he lived in Loveland, Colorado, though for many years he had been an astronomer, chief scientist, and chairman of the Hayden Planetarium at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History.
Franklin earned a doctorate in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley, and joined the department of terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. In 1955, he and Dr. Bernard F. Burke were scanning the skies for radio noise when they heard a hissing sound they at first thought came from the spark plugs of a passing vehicle. They later identified the source of the radio emissions as the planet Jupiter. It was the first noise ever identified as coming from a specific planet.
In 1956, Franklin became an astronomer at the Hayden Planetarium, where he mounted big shows. In 1958, he produced “The Expanding Universe,” for which he chose music by Bizet, Brahms, Ravel, Schubert, and Stravinsky.
In 1970, he invented a watch for Moon walkers that measures time in lunations, the period it takes the moon to rotate and revolve around the Sun. One lunation is exactly 29.530589 Earth days.
Franklin also, for many years, provided astronomical information to the New York Times, including the hour of sunrise. According to the Times, when the paper asked him “to explain how he came up with the times of sunrise and sunset, he expounded about spherical trigonometry, beginning with the correct declination of the sun—meaning its position north or south of the equator—which changes moment by moment. He ended by explaining why leap years are needed to correct inevitable miscalculations.”
Dr. Franklin is survived by his wife, Charlotte; three daughters, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.