January 5: Julio Garavito Armero

Julio Garavito Armero

January 5, 1865 – March 11, 1920

Julio Garavito Armero was a Colombian astronomer. Perhaps his most important work was on celestial mechanics, which turned into studies about lunar fluctuations and their influence on weather, floods, polar ice, and the Earth's orbital acceleration (this was corroborated later). He worked also in other areas such as optics (this work was left unfinished at his death), and economics, by which he helped the country recover from the rough civil war.

He opposed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity - probably he was opposing vague and contradictory opinions on this theory and its influence on classical physics. Despite this, Garavito was very conservative with his scientific knowledge. He has been compared to two great scientists of the 19th century: José Celestino Mutis and Francisco José de Caldas.

The lunar crater Garavito is named in his honor.