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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE PEOG-EESS OE SCIENCE 



THE DEATH OF SIMON NEWCOMB 

 We have not had in America a great 

 period of scientific productivity such 

 as formed part of the Victorian era in 

 Great Britain or followed the renais- 

 sance of the universities in Germany. 

 Perhaps only in one science have we 

 been in the position of leaders. In 

 astronomy, thanks it may be to the 

 endowment of observatories where re- 

 search was not crowded by elementary 

 teaching, we have done our share, or 

 more than our share, for the advance- 

 ment of science. Our great astronomer, 

 who gave distinction to science in 

 America, is now dead, and we mourn 

 the loss of one whose place can not be 

 filled. 



Simon Newcomb was born on March 

 12, 1835, in a village of Nova Scotia, 

 but was of New England descent from 

 five generations of Simon Newcombs, as 

 well as on the side of his mother. In 

 his " Reminiscences of an Astronomer," 

 published six years ago, there is an 

 interesting account of his early life. 

 His father was a school teacher who 

 moved from village to village in ac- 

 cordance with the custom of the time. 

 The child was apt at figures and had 

 done arithmetic through cube root at 

 the age of six and a half. He read 

 with avidity the few books that came 

 within reach, especially those concerned 

 with science, but had no regular school- 

 ing or education in the ordinary sense. 

 At the age of fourteen he was appren- 

 ticed as a boy of all work to an ir- 

 regular practitioner in the hope that 

 he might pick up some knowledge of 

 medicine. This result not following, 

 he ran away, worked his passage to 

 Massachusetts in a sailing boat and 

 found himself teaching in a country 

 school in Maryland at the age of eight- 

 een. A couple of years later, he became 



acquainted with Secretary Henry of 

 the Smithsonian Institution, it may be 

 through borrowing from the institution 

 a copy of Laplace's " Mechanique Cel- 

 este," a knowledge of which he regarded 

 as necessary for a computer. Such a 

 position he soon afterwards obtained 

 on the " Nautical Almanac," then con- 

 ducted at Cambridge. He was at the 

 same time able to enter Harvard Uni- 

 versity, where he studied under Pro- 

 fessor Peirce and read in earnest the 

 works of Laplace and La Grange. 



Henceforth Newcomb's scientific ca- 

 reer is a long record of sound and 

 brilliant achievement. Beginning with 

 work on the orbits of the asteroids he 

 extended it to Uranus and Neptune 

 and to other planets and to the moon. 

 The mathematical genius required for 

 work of this kind is of the highest 

 type; many would regard Laplace as 

 the greatest intellect that the world 

 has produced, and in America he has 

 had worthy successors in Newcomb and 

 in Hill. 



In 1861 Newcomb was appointed pro- 

 fessor of mathematics in the navy, and 

 in 1877 superintendent of the Nautical 

 Almanac Office, a position which he 

 held till he was relieved in 1897 at 

 the age limit with the relative rank 

 of rear-admiral. An appropriation to 

 enable him to continue his worK was 

 made by the congress and later it was 

 carried forward under the auspices of 

 the Carnegie Institution to be ended 

 only with his death. He declined the 

 directorship of the Harvard Observa- 

 tory, but accepted a professorship in 

 the Johns Hopkins University in con- 

 junction with his work at Washington. 



In addition to his great work in 

 celestial mechanics, Newcomb performed 

 important services for astronomy and 

 for science in many directions. One of 



