Simon Newcomb

Taught school in Salem, walked to Washington, connection with Smithsonian, then Nautical Almanac office according to http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/Mathematicians/Newcomb.html

at that time in Cambridge, MA; then Harvard. Notes on overseas trips. After the induction into the Hall of Fame, but most probably in same year (1936?).

The following addresses gathered by Paul at the Wallace and Area museum; some comments by JFR:

http://www.cis.vt.edu/CSSS/staff/moyer_publications.html Nothing in addition to those below http://www.aas.org/~had/bib.html quoted below

http://www.obliquity.com/newcomb/wife.html

http://users.aol.com/physics314/pquotes.html about airplanes

http://www.aas.org/~had/meeting.html referred to below

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Newcomb.html

http://english.ttu.edu/courses/5343/newcomb.htm

http://www.obliquity.com/newcomb/

http://gsb-www.uchicago.edu/fac/alpha/lamont/newcomb.html This is excellent - many links.

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New or more comprehensive material gathered by JFR 9/3/97:

Newcomb was probably the first president of the American Astronomical Society; from 1895-1909, according to http://www.aas.org/council/past_officers.html

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from http://www.aas.org/~had/meeting.html

MEETING: First Conference of Astronomers and Astrophysicists

Dates: October 18-20, 1897

Place: Yerkes Observatory, Williams Bay, Wisconsin

. . .

Held in Conjunction With: Dedication of Yerkes Observatory

Notes: Prospect of forming an astronomical society in America first presented at this meeting. Simon Newcomb and James E. Keeler also gave speeches that delineated and enshrined the differences between their competing fields of astrophysics and traditional astronomy. George Ellery Hale, the Director of Yerkes, also presented a resolution requesting that the directors of collegiate observatories around the nation not be asked to teach more than five hours per week to allow greater freedom in the arrangement of observation and research. Time ran out before a vote but 24 astronomers did sign the petition via mail.

. . .

MEETING: Second Annual Meeting of the A&ASA\

Dates: June 26-28, 1900

Place: Columbia University, New York

. . .

Officers:

President, Simon Newcomb

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Held in Conjunction With: Section A (Mathematics and Astronomy) of the AAAS

Notes: Pickering proposed a plan for the registration of astronomers in a job bank but the membership expressed no desire to undertake the work. Harvard College Observatory undertook the work instead. A long discussion about how to best observe the close approach of Eros was begun at Newcomb's instigation.

. . .

MEETING: Sixth Annual Meeting of the A&ASA

Dates: December 27-30, 1904

Place: Flower Observatory, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

. . .

President, Simon Newcomb

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New Committees: At Hale's urging, a committee on solar research was appointed by Newcomb during the summer of 1904 to cooperate with the National Academy of Sciences. The Executive Council made it permanent during this meeting.

. . .

MEETING: Tenth Meeting

Dates: August 19-21, 1909

Place: Yerkes Observatory, Williams Bay, Wisconsin

. . .

Held In Conjunction With: Tenth Anniversary of Society (reason for holding meeting at Yerkes).

Notes: Pickering eulogized Newcomb and Hough (both died during past year) and Society passed resolution commending his career. Pickering, in presidential address, suggested using small grants not exceeding $1000 to fund routine work at small and large professional observatories or at amateur observatories. Asked members to forward ideas for these small grants. Proposal to change Society's name to AAS discussed and rejected to not offend those involved in "laboratory research." Society also went on record against an attempt to communicate with Mars. Unanimous in believing such attempts useless and no formal action given to "absurd accounts" in recent papers.

End of AAS reports. see also however http://www.aas.org/~had/origin.html origins of the AAS.

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http://uwast.astro.wisc.edu/~astrolib/enha11.html.1 (ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER FOR THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY):

Simon Newcomb (see planet 855), who continued his work, considered [Peter Andreas] Hansen the greatest master of celestial mechanics since Laplace {see planet (4628)}. The name was proposed by L.K.Kristensen and endorsed by L.D.Schmadel.

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There was quite a discussion between Newcomb, a traditionalist, and those who were in favor of astrophysics, particularly Hale; see http://www.aas.org/~had/name.html Also various other www.aas.org pages.

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For Newcomb and the USNO see especially http://www.aas.org/~had/politics.html quite controversial, involving lots of politics, astronomical and otherwise.

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>From H. G. Wells' The Time Machine; the "Time Traveler" is speaking.

`It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why THREE dimensions particularly -- why not another direction at right angles to the other three? -- and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of thee dimensions they could represent one of four -- if they could master the perspective of the thing. See?'

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http://www.uiuc.edu/refs/timeline/gravity.html (Gravitational Physics and Relativity):

1882 : Simon Newcomb observes a 43'' per century excess precession of Mercury's orbit

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Newcomb on airplanes often quoted. E. g. http://www.foresight.org/News/negativeComments.html

"... The limit which the rarity of the air places upon its power of supporting wings, taken in connection with the combined weight of a man and a machine, make a drawback which we should not too hastily assume our ability to overcome. The example of the bird does not prove that man can fly. The hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight which the manager of the machine must add to it over and above that necessary in the bird may well prove an insurmountable obstacle to success."

"The practical difficulties in the way of realizing the movement of such an object are obvious. The aeroplane must have its propellers. These must be driven by an engine with a source of power. Weight is an essential quality of every engine. The propellers must be made of metal, which has its weakness, and which is liable to give way when its speed attains a certain limit. And, granting complete success, imagine the proud possessor of the aeroplane darting through the air at a speed of several hundred feet per second! It is the speed alone that sustains him. Once he slackens his speed, down he begins to fall. He may, indeed, increase the inclination of his aeroplane. Then he increases the resistance necessary to move it. Once he stops he falls a dead mass. How shall he reach the ground without destroying his delicate machinery?"

Source: Newcomb, Simon. Outlook for the Flying Machine. The Independent, October 22, 1903. pp. 2508, 2510-2511.

Simon Newcomb also wrote:

"...The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be."

Source: Clarke, Arthur C. Profiles of the Future. New York, Harper and Row, 1962. pp. 2-3.

Full text of one of Newcomb's contributions here in:

http://hawaii.cogsci.uiuc.edu/invent/library/Magazines/Airship_Coming.html

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Apparently Newcomb was interested in a "magnetic girl"; see http://www.nardis.com/~twchan/mag.html

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Moyer referred to above. He is preparing an article for the Scientific American: Simon Newcomb: Astronomer with an Attitude. Already published: A Scientists Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992

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Good Newcomb links in: http://yorty.sonoma.edu/people/faculty/tenn/BM2M-N.html#1

Simon Newcomb

12 March 1835

1898 Bruce Medalist

11 July 1909

At age eighteen Newcomb, with no money and little education, made his way on foot from his native Nova Scotia to the United States. Later he found employment as a computer with the Nautical Almanac Office, then in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned a B.S. at Harvard. He eventually became director of the Nautical Almanac Office (http://riemann.usno.navy.mil/AA/about/docs/history.html ) , later part of the United States Naval Observatory. He used carefully analyzed measurements of stellar and planetary positions to compute motions of the sun, moon, planets, and their satellites. He measured the speed of light and the constant of precession. He provided important guidance on the construction of the world's largest telescopes. Newcomb wrote profusely on mathematics, economics, and other subjects and was a leader in American science. For more see Simon Newcomb: Man of Science; the University of St. Andrews; Mercury 19, 1, 18 (1990); and Griffith Observer 51, 11, 2 (1987).

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There must be material at Johns Hopkins, where he was professor.

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http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/HistTopics/Orbits.html#130

Le Verrier had published an account of his theory of Mercury in 1859. He pointed out that there was a discrepancy of 38" per century between the predicted motion of the perihelion (the point of closest approach of the planet to the Sun) which was 527" per century and the observed value of 565" per century. In fact the actual discrepancy was 43" per century and this was pointed out by later by Simon Newcomb. Le Verrier was convinced that a planet or ring of material lay inside the orbit of Mercury but being close to the Sun had not been observed.

Le Verrier's search proved in vain and by 1896 Tisserand had concluded that no such perturbing body existed. Newcomb explained the discrepancy in the motion of the perihelion by assuming a minute departure from an inverse square law of gravitation. This was the first time that Newton's theory had been questioned for a long time. In fact this discrepancy in the motion of the perihelion of Mercury was to provide the proof that Newtonian theory had to give way to Einstein's theory of relativity. More details relating to the advance of Mercury's perihelion are contained in the article on general relativity.

This may account (JFR) for Einstein's remark [cited in the Mills document].

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http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/Stories/EstimatingtheSpeedofLight.html

Simon Newcomb measured the time required for light to travel from his laboratory on the Potomac River to a mirror at the base of the Washington Monument and back, a total distance of about 7400 meters. These measurements were used to estimate the speed of light.

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Various papers, mostly from the USNO papers, are in:

http://aries.usno.navy.mil/ad_home/pub_astpapers.html

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Simon Newcomb's role in the assassination of President Garfield James Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881 and lingered until September 19, 1881 when he died. The problem was that a bullet was lodged inside his chest. Finding the exact location of the bullet was very critical in the president's recovery. X-rays had not been invented yet so the only way to determine the exact location of the bullet was to do a manual probe with instruments. If they were to make continued probes to locate the bullet, it increased the risk of infection. One week after the shooting. Simon Newcomb was interviewed by a reporter for the Washington National Intelligencer...

This is in: http://www.historybuff.com/library/refgarfield.html but JFR thinks it unlikely that this is our Newcomb. Said to be from Baltimore and involved in electricity. However, this is included in Lamont's page. Could be though; JFR now remembers that SN taught at JHU.

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Dover reprint: A Compendium of Spherical Astronomy, Simon Newcomb, Dover Publications, 1960

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It is possible a crater on Mars named after him:

http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/bayes-group/Atlas/Mars/features/n/newcomb.html

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Multimedia Encyclopedia:

Newcomb, Simon The American astronomer Simon Newcomb, b. Wallace, Nova Scotia, Mar. 12, 1835, d. July 11, 1909, made significant contributions to celestial mechanics. Largely self-taught in his early years, Newcomb graduated from Harvard University (1858). Newcomb worked (1857-61) for the American Nautical Almanac Office and later served (1877-97) as its director.

He was professor of mathematics (1861-77) at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., and professor of mathematics and astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University (1884-94). His major life work was the production of improved tables--used almost worldwide--of the positions and orbital elements of the Moon and the planets. Newcomb was also known for his popular writings, among them Astronomy for Everybody (1902) and an autobiography, The Reminiscences of an Astronomer (1903).

Steven J. Dick Bibliography: Hylander, Clarence J., American Scientists (1968).

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Dear Mr Ross,

Many thanks for your e-mail, which contained several interesting facts about Simon Newcomb of which I was unaware. I certainly had no idea that Einstein himself acknowledged his debt to Newcomb; praise from Einstein is praise indeed!

Newcomb is still regarded as one of the greatest figures in 19th-century astronomy by those of us who continue his work. At the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, the building which houses the Master Clock of the United States is named after him.

Newcomb's calculations of the orbits of the inner planets were used as the basis of the "Astronomical Almanac" and "Nautical Almanac" for most of the 20th century. It was only in 1984 that his work was superseded by computer-generated calculations from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Hence, for over 80 years, sailors around the world navigated using almanacs based upon Newcomb's work.

I strongly recommend his autobiography to you. It is written with a sense of humour and modesty which makes it a pleasure to read. Moreover, it was written for a general audience, so the reader isn't expected to be an expert in astronomy. The chapters describing his early life, and particularly his apprenticeship to a quack doctor, are especially entertaining.

Best wishes,

David Harper

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Dr David Harper, the Sanger Centre - home page: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Users/adh/

The following in the history of mathematicians file (http://www.obliquity.com/newcomb/ ):

". . .in about 1854 after he joined his father who had moved to Maryland . . ."

James F. Ross, March 3, 1998