Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, born in Illinois in 1906, grew up on a farm northwest of Burdett and graduated from Burdett High School in 1925. During his youth, he explored the heavens with homemade telescopes. Later hired by Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, he discovered Pluto, then considered the outermost planet in the solar system, in 1930. During his search, he photographed 65 percent of the sky and spent 7,000 hours examining about 90 million star images. In addition to Pluto, he discovered six star clusters, one cloud of galaxies, one comet, and about 775 asteroids. He earned degrees from the University of Kansas and Northern Arizona University and concluded his career as an astronomy professor at New Mexico State University.