Percival Lawrence Lowell (March 13, 1855 - November 12, 1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. For fifteen years he studied Mars extensively, and made intricate drawings of the surface markings as he perceived them. More than anyone else he popularized the belief that these markings showed that Mars sustained intelligent life forms. He conceived Mars as a vast irrigation project and drew the map of its towns and waterways. He theorized that an advanced but desperate culture had built the canals to tap Mars' polar ice caps, the last source of water on an inexorably drying planet. While this idea excited the public, the astronomical community was skeptical. Many astronomers could not see these markings, and few believed that they were as extensive as Lowell claimed. As a result, Lowell and his observatory were largely ostracized. These canals existed only in the eye of the beholder, and not on Mars.