Simon Newcomb

Simon Newcomb , 1835-1909, American astronomer, b. Nova Scotia, grad. Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, 1858. Living in the United States from 1853, he was appointed (1857) a computer on the American Nautical Almanac and later (1877-97) was its director. He was professor of mathematics in the U.S. navy from 1861 until his retirement in 1897, professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins from 1884 to 1894, and for several years editor of the American Journal of Mathematics. Newcomb participated in several eclipse expeditions and in 1882 went to the Cape of Good Hope to observe the transit of Venus. The record of many of his researches was published in the Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris, a series that he established in 1879. His investigations and computations of the orbits of six planets resulted in his tables of the planetary system, which were almost universally adopted by the observatories of the world. Newcomb urged the use of a common system of constants and fundamental stars by astronomers of all nations. A subject to which he devoted many years of study was the theory of the moon's motion. From the formulas he established it was possible to construct accurate lunar tables. His writings include a valuable early paper, On the Secular Variations and Mutual Relations of the Orbits of the Asteroids (1860) and On the Motion of Hyperion (1891).

Bibliography: See his Reminiscences of an Astronomer (1903); study by L. M. Dunphy (1956).

Newcomb, Simon (1835–1909)Canadian-born American mathematical astronomer. At the US Naval Observatory's Nautical Almanac office, of which he became head in 1877, he initiated an extensive project to refine the orbits of the Moon and planets. ( G. W.Hill was assigned the motions of Jupiter and Saturn.) The project involved the use of historical data, from which he discovered the non-Newtonian component of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit that was later accounted for by the general theory of relativity. Newcomb improved the value of the solar parallax and other astronomical constants, and worked with A. A.Michelson on a method for measuring the speed of light.

Newcomb, Simon (1835–1909), mathematical astronomer, political economist, science commentator.Born in Wallace, Nova Scotia, Simon Newcomb showed exceptional intellectual promise under the tutelage of his school‐teacher father. Displaying a particular aptitude for mathematics and astronomy, Newcomb in 1856 became a computational assistant at the U.S. Navy's Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received a bachelor of science degree from Harvard in 1858. In 1861, he advanced to professor of mathematics at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen three years later. Gaining an international reputation among astronomers not only for his observational but also for his calculative skills, he served as superintendent of the Nautical Almanac Office, now located in Washington, from 1877 to 1897.

Newcomb excelled in mathematical analyses of the orbital motions of the moon and planets in relation to one another and to the sun. He helped bring international uniformity to classical, positional astronomy by overseeing an ambitious program of recasting computational methods, reevaluating astronomical constants, rectifying old observational data, recalculating commonly accepted orbits, and refining the positional tables for the planets and the moon. By the time of his death, he ranked among the era's most acclaimed American scientists.

Newcomb's work as a political economist further enhanced his reputation. Building on John Stuart Mill's classical liberalism, Newcomb published in 1885 a mathematically rigorous textbook on labor, currency, taxation, trade, and finance. Sensitive to other social and cultural issues, he criticized Christian natural theology, psychical research, and the nation's meager support for science. He underpinned his commentaries with appeals to a positivistic conception of the scientific method, aligning himself with the budding American movement later labeled pragmatism. Also adept at writing scientific popularizations and textbooks, and even science fiction, he published all told over five hundred technical, popular, and pedagogic books and articles.
See also Mathematics and Statistics; Observatories; Physical Sciences; Science: Revolutionary War to World War I.

Bibliography

Albert E. Moyer , A Scientist's Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method, 1992.
David M. Kennedy , Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1998.

Albert E. Moyer