Douglass, Andrew Ellicott (1867-1962)

US astronomer. He investigated the relationship between sunspots and climate by examining ancient Arizona pine and sequoia growth rings. He established the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research in 1937 and coined the term ‘dendrochronology’, for the system of tree-ring dating.

He was born in Windsor, Vermont. He became a researcher at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff and then a physics and astronomy professor at Arizona University, later directing the Stewart Observatory. He published Climatic Cycles and Tree Growth (3 vols 1919-36), and dendrochronology soon became an invaluable means for archaeologists to date prehistoric remains.