Arthur Allen Hoag was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

 most famous for his discovery of Hoag's object

Hoag's Object

Hoag's Object is a non-typical galaxy of the type known as a ring galaxy. The appearance of this object has interested amateur astronomers as much as its uncommon structure has fascinated professionals...

 in 1950. He was the son of Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

, Cornell, and University of Michigan faculty member Lynne Arthur Hoag and wife Wylma Wood Hoag. He had two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and a son named Tom. His mother and sister Mary (aged 3) died on June 1, 1926 when the Washington Irving

Washington Irving (sidewheeler)

The PS Washington Irving was a sidewheel day boat and the largest flagship of the Hudson River Day Line that operated on the Hudson River from 1913 to 1926....

 was rammed by an oil barge and sunk on the North River

North River (New York-New Jersey)

North River is an alternate name for the southernmost portion of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City and northeastern New Jersey. The colonial name for the entire Hudson given to it by the Dutch in the early seventeenth century, the term fell out of general use for most of the river's...

.

The 3225 Hoag

3225 Hoag

3225 Hoag is an inner main belt asteroid of 1.780 AU. It is a member of the Hungaria family.It has an eccentricity of 0.0530553 and an orbital period of ~941 days ....

 asteroid discovered by Carolyn and E. M. Shoemaker was named after him. He received his PhD in Astronomy from Harvard in 1953 under Bart Bok

Bart Bok

Bart Jan Bok was a Dutch-American astronomer.He was born in the Netherlands, but spent a good deal of his childhood days growing up in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies. He was educated at the Leiden and Groningen Universities. In 1929 he married fellow astronomer Dr...

. He was director of the Lowell Observatory

Lowell Observatory

Lowell Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell Observatory was established in 1894, placing it among the oldest observatories in the United States, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965....

 in Flagstaff, Arizona

Flagstaff, Arizona

Flagstaff is a city located in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2010, the city's population was 65,870. The population of the Metropolitan Statistical Area was at 134,421 in 2010. It is the county seat of Coconino County...

 from 1977. He was noted for his work in photoelectric and photographic photometry

Photometry (astronomy)

Photometry is a technique of astronomy concerned with measuring the flux, or intensity of an astronomical object's electromagnetic radiation...

. He also developed astronomical instruments. He researched quasistellar sources.