4 SIMON NEWCOMB— CAMPBELL. [Mmcoi ?vol. t xvu: 



Newcomb's assigned duties in the Almanac office required only five hours a day, and he 

 took advantage of the opportunity to enroll himself as a student of mathematics in the Lawrence 

 Scientific School in Harvard College, where he pursued studies under the direction of Prof. 

 Benjamin Peirce. He received the degree of bachelor of science in 1S58. During his remaining 

 three years in Cambridge he was on the rolls of Harvard College as a resident graduate. 



Newcomb's contributions to mathematical astronomy began shortly following his appoint- 

 ment on the Nautical Almanac. His first paper, On a Method in Dynamics, was dated April 2, 

 1S5S, and was published in Gould's Astronomical Journal. Shortly thereafter he decided to 

 investigate the famous and difficult hypothesis that the asteroids owe their origin to the explosion 

 of one and the same antecedent body at some past epoch. If this was the case, then the orbits 

 of the several pieces of the disrupted body passed through a common point at that epoch — the 

 point occupied by the parent body at the instant of disruption. He read a paper at the Spring- 

 field meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1S59 on the changes 

 in the orbit of one asteroid in several hundred thousands of years past. A month later he pub- 

 lished similar information for three other asteroids, and in the spring of 1S60 the final results 

 of his extensive investigation were published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences, under the title, On the Secular Variations and Mutual Relations of the 

 Asteroids. He concluded that, so far as our present theory of motion could show, the asteroids 

 had never passed through a common point, and therefore the hypothesis was not tenable. 



The Nautical Almanac office dispatched an expedition, in charge of Simon Newcomb and 

 William Ferrel, to observe the total solar eclipse of July, 1S60, at the point where the shadow 

 path crossed the Saskatchewan River, north of Lake Winnipeg. The travel was arduous, and 

 only at the cost of a severe struggle did the birch-bark canoes, propelled by Indians, carry 

 them across Lake Winnipeg and up the Saskatchewan River in time to make hasty prepara- 

 tions for the observations. Unfortunately the sky was completely clouded at the time of the 

 eclipse. 



In August, 1861, Dr. B. A. Gould recommended to Newcomb that he apply for the vacant 

 position of professor of mathematics in the United States Navy, for service in the Naval 

 Observatory. The plan did not appeal strongly to Newcomb, as his tastes and talents were 

 along the line of mathematical astronomy, in contradistinction to observational astronomy. 

 Nevertheless, it was desirable to provide for the needs of the future, and he applied. The 

 appointment was made by President Lincoln, and Newcomb reported to Capt. Gilliss, Superin- 

 tendent of the Naval Observatory, on October 7, 1861. He was assigned to duty as assistant 

 on the transit instrument, under Prof. Yarnall in charge. He and Yarnall alternated in observ- 

 ing right ascensions of the stars — such stars as each "thought best to observe." The mural 

 circle at the other end of the building observed the declinations of such stars as the professor 

 in charge of that instrument chose. 



In the year 1863 Newcomb was placed in charge of the mural circle and of the prime vertical 

 transit instrument. He then proposed to Supt. Gilliss that a homogeneity of observing program 

 and method 2 should mark the work of the Naval Observatory, in place of the go-as-you- 

 please policy previously followed by every member of the staff, and the superintendent was 

 pleased to approve and adopt the suggestion. The new transit circle, ordered in Berlin for the 

 Naval Observatory, arrived in 1865, and was placed in Newcomb's charge. He planned with 

 great care a four years' program of "fundamental" observing; that is, a system of observing 

 which rests upon its own foundations, as distinguished from the "differential" method, which 

 assumes the correctness of, and is based upon, the results of earlier observations. He brought 

 this program to completion in 1869. Discussion of the observations revealed, as he had ex- 

 pected, the presence of systematic errors in existing catalogues of star positions, and especially 

 in their right ascensions, to the effect that the assigned right ascensions of the stars in one part 

 of the sky were systematically too great, and in another part of the sky systematically too small. 

 His observing program had been designed originally to detect such errors in the old catalogues 

 and to eliminate them from his own work. 



a European practice, notably at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, had suggested this to Newcomb. 



