Though Pluto was stripped of its planetary status last August, some Lawrencians still celebrated the man who discovered the rock Thursday night at the Watkins Community Museum of History.

“There’s always going to be a fondness for it here,” said John Beam, a 1958 Kansas University graduate and former physics professor.

But scientifically, Pluto doesn’t fit the definition of a planet, he said.

About 20 people listened to Barbara Anthony-Twarog, Kansas University professor of physics and astronomy, as she presented a lecture about Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

“He was one of the most famous alumnae,” Anthony-Twarog said. “It was neat for kids.”

Tombaugh grew up in Kansas. At age 23, he moved to Arizona, where he worked at Lowell Observatory and was tasked to search for planets. After his discovery, he was awarded a scholarship from KU. He finished his bachelor’s degree in 1936 and a master’s in 1939, she said. He lived in Old West Lawrence with his wife. He spent his later years in New Mexico, where he died in 1997.

“We have a kind of ownership,” Phyliss Tiffany, museum board member, said. “It’s kind of taking it away from us.”

“In a lot of people’s opinions it was a bad decision,” Anthony-Twarog said of the demotion.

She said many scientists felt the International Astronomical Union’s decision to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet was “bogus” and they could have created a better and simpler definition that would have included Pluto, its moon and possibly more bodies.

“That would have been more satisfying and more scientifically open-minded,” she said.

Rebecca Phipps, museum director, said this was the first lecture in a new program titled Local History Makers at the museum that will focus on Kansans who have affected others’ lives locally and nationally.