Julio Garavito

Julio Garavito Armero (Bogotá, January 5, 1865-Bogotá, March 11, 1920) was a Colombian astronomer, mathematician, economist, poet, and engineer. His research contributed to the development of Sciences in Colombia during the XIX century. He has been placed at the same level as two other important New Granadan scientists of the XIX century, José Celestino Mutis and Francisco José de Caldas.

In his honor, one of the lunar craters on the opposite side to that visible from Earth was named after him in 1970.

Biography

Son of Hermogenes Garavito, a merchant from the city, and Dolores Armero, a family of Santa Fe origin.

He criticized the politicians of his time, despite having been a Bogotá councilor and a deputy in the Cundinamarca Assembly.

In pedagogy, he showed innovative ideas, proposing methods that he considered logical and natural for objective teaching, the result of his study of child psychology.^{[citation required]}

Academic trajectory

Manuel Antonio Rueda and Luis María Lleras were some of his teachers; the latter qualified him from a young age as promise for mathematics.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Letters in 1884. In 1885, at the age of 20, he interrupted his studies because of the numerous civil wars that plagued the country. He studied mathematics and civil engineering at the National University of Colombia Garavito is, as far as documented information is known, the first to graduate as a mathematics professor.

Scientific work

He presented a second thesis that consisted of calculating in a manometer all the mathematical possibilities that this instrument has. Finally, to qualify for the title of Civil Engineer, he developed a type of triangular structure to build bridges.

Director of the Astronomical Observatory

In 1902 he proposed to the government a plan for the Observatory to make the chart of Colombia, with astronomical methods, starting from the latitude of Santafé de Bogotá. The project was approved and the Office of Longitudes was created, under the direction of Garavito. This entity was in charge of delimiting the country's borders and publishing general and regional maps of Colombia. Therefore, he intervened decisively in the elaboration of the geographical map of Colombia, resorting to ingenious procedures that replaced the absence of geodesic vertices by using astronomical vertices, referred to and fixed by coordinates to the most important cities and towns in the country and resorting to changes of signals between the Astronomical Observatory and the telegraph stations of each of those towns.

As an astronomer at the Observatory, of which he was director for 27 years, he made numerous useful discoveries, such as the latitudinal location of Bogotá, studies of the comets that passed through the Earth between 1901 and 1910, the latter, the Halley.

His most important contribution was the study of celestial mechanics, which would eventually become the study of lunar fluctuations and their influence on temporal, climatic, water and polar ice behavior, as well as the analysis of acceleration terrestrial orbital, matter that would be corroborated later.

He also worked in areas such as optical physics, work that remained unfinished at his death; and the economy, thanks to which he helped recover his country from the civil war that went through his time, giving paper money effective and unconventional value. To do this, she held economic conferences and congresses, in addition to studying wealth cycles and human influences that affect the economy, such as war or overpopulation.

Later, he was head of the Chorographic Commission, created in order to promote the development of Colombian railways and the delimitation of the border with Venezuela.

As a teacher, Garavito was a professor of calculus, rational mechanics, and astronomy, chairs he held until his death.

He was opposed to the Theory of Relativity, probably because of vague opinions (since he did not study it in depth), opposed and contradictory about that theory and its influence on classical science; in addition to the condemnation of certain sectors of the Colombian clergy, which in his condition as believers he complied with. It was representative of Colombian science at the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX: it was, on the one hand, partially isolated from its colleagues in other countries -he never attended an international congress- and on the other, he found himself in a completely apathetic and indifferent internal cultural environment. He possessed an admiration for Newtonian mechanics and came to good-naturedly believe that celestial mechanics had already given its last word in development. He also thought of astronomical science (1920).

Moon Crater

Photograph of the crater Garavito (Mission Lunar Orbiter)

The General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), meeting in Moscow (Russia) in 1958, began the process of naming the accidents and details that were already being known on the opposite side of the Moon, the one that was never known. View from the surface of the Earth.

At the beginning of the 70s, the innumerable details of that other side of the Moon demanded a worldwide consultation to propose names, so the National Astronomical Observatory sent a list, from which the name was chosen. name of Garavito, whose work on the Moon had been cited by Brouwer and Clemente in Methods of Celestial Mechanics, in 1961.

The name of Garavito was accepted during the UIA meeting held in Brighton (England) in 1970, and it corresponded to a crater on the side of the Moon hidden from Earth, located at the selenographic coordinates of latitude 48° to the south and 157° east longitude. By then he was the only Latin American with that honor.

Death

Tomb of Julio Garavito
in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá.

Julio Garavito died at the age of 55 as a result of an ailment he had acquired after working in a coal mine. His wife, María Luisa Cadena, had died 4 years earlier.

Posts

• Treaty of celestial mechanics (1893)
• The bright comet 1901
• The History of Astronomy
• The Nature of the Sun (1907)
• The solar eclipse (1912)
• Planetary conjunctions (1919)
• The vaults and their radiants
• Comet Halley 1910
• Astronomical optical (1920)
• The Moon Tables (1920). Your Opus Magna
• The Needle Game (1891)
• The rational theory of flat and reverse curves, its possible connections with the theory of covariants and invariants (1905)
• Determination of the length of the observatory deducted by star concealments by the moon
• Determination of the length of the observatory
• Basic formula in fluid movement
• Note on the dynamics of electrons
• The paradox of mathematical optics
• Derived in the verses of vector theory
• Application of the Coriolis theorem to the motion of the instant plane of the lunar orbit and the motion of the Moon in that plane
• Generation of universal weighing law to double stars and calculation of micrometric double stars
• Evolution in the distribution of wealth and scientific basis of tax.
• Agricultural insurance.
• Main cause of the European War.

Honors and Recognitions

Garavito achieved numerous national and international distinctions such as being a full member and first president of the Geographical Society of Colombia - Academy of Geographical Sciences, supernumerary member of the Colombian Society of Engineers, the Geographical Society of Lima, the French Astronomical Society and the Belgian Astronomical Society. He was also a candidate to be part of the Academy of Hispanic American History of Sciences and Arts.

In 1919, shortly before the death of Julio Garavito, the Colombian government issued a decree ordering to honor his memory and activity as a Colombian scientist, publishing at the State expense all his scientific works —many of which were found unpublished—, acquiring the first edition of each of them, and adopting them as teaching texts in the country's universities. The erection of a bronze bust was also ordered. Such good intentions were only partially fulfilled, since a large part of the works ended up being published due to the effort and commitment of Jorge Álvarez Lleras and the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences during the 1930s and 1940s, rather than a effective interest on the part of the Colombian State. The National Congress also recognized Garavito as one of the symbols of Colombian engineering, and gave the name of this scientist to the order it created to honor Colombian engineers.

The following are some of the recognitions established in memory of Julio Garavito:

Editing Engineering Analyses - No. 325:

In 1920, the year of its death, the Colombian Society of Engineers dedicated this edition, which included a biography, written by the engineer Jorge Álvarez Lleras.

Order to Merito Julio Garavito:

Established on January 5, 1965, centenary of the birth of Julio Garavito. Created by the National Congress, according to Law 135 of 1963 to exalt the values of Colombian engineering and engineers.

The Moon's Garavite Crater:

On the proposal of the Astronomical Observatory, the International Astronomical Union, on August 27, 1970, assigned the name Garavito to a crater of the Moon, 80 kilometers wide, located at the latitude coordinates 47o.6 south and longitude 156o.7 east. This lunar crater — located on the hidden side — is located northwest of the Poincaré Plain and west of the Chrétien crater. Currently five craters bear the names Garavito, differentiated by a letter, S, C, D, Q and Y respectively.

Commemorative seal:

4-cent stamp printed in 1949.

Colombian pesos billet:

In 1996, the ticket in which his face appears, as well as images of the Moon, the Astronomical Observatory and various geometric figures were put into circulation.

Colombian School of Engineering Julio Garavito, founded in 1972:

Named in your honor.

Bronze busts:

In access to the headquarters of the Colombian Society of Engineers in Bogotá, in the gardens of the Astronomical Observatory in Bogotá adjacent to the House of Nariño, and in the block C of the Colombian School of Engineering.

Julio Garavito Armero, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, headquarters in Bogotá:

After being refurbished, on 21 November 2014 he was renamed.