xii OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



prodigious labor involved in applying the latter to the derivations 

 of new tables of the moon's motion is being well taken care of by 

 our fellow member, Professor Ernest W. Brown. 



In September, 1877, occurred an event which had been long 

 anticipated, viz., the retirement of Professor Coffin from the direc- 

 torship of the " Nautical Almanac," and the appointment of Profes- 

 :sor Newcomb to this position. Meanwhile, in 1875, the director- 

 :ship of the Harvard College Observatory became vacant by the 

 death of Professor Winlock. Soon after, Professor Newcomb was 

 surprised to receive from President Eliot a letter offering him the 

 position. Although, as has been said already, the practical work of 

 •an observatory was not the line of activity which appealed most 

 strongly to Professor Newcomb's tastes, a professorship at Harvard, 

 with all that this implies, was not to be lightly disregarded. There 

 Avas, moreover, opportunity for escape from the political atmosphere 

 with all its petty annoyances, attendant on a government position at 

 Washington. 



I do not know that Professor Newcomb was ever fully convinced 

 that he had chosen the better course in declining this offer, though 

 "he disposes of the matter very modestly as follows : " No one who 

 knows what the Cambridge observatory has become under Professor 

 Pickering can feel that Harvard had any cause to regret my 

 •decision." 



The directorship of the " Nautical Almanac " now gave Profes- 

 sor Newcomb the long-wished-for opportunity to take up seriously 

 the herculean task of a complete revision of the entire subject of 

 ■exact astronomy. Only those who have had some experience in 

 these matters can form any adequate conception of what this in- 

 volved. The vast field of stellar astronomy, of the planetary and 

 lunar motions, had been cultivated since the time of Hipparchus 

 by many of the ablest minds which the world has produced. As, 

 however, each investigator usually carried on his work independently 

 of the others, there was great want of consistency and homogeneity 

 in the mass taken as a whole. Professor Newcomb may not at first 

 have planned so large an undertaking, but this is the form which 

 it assumed. For twenty years, during which he remained at the 



