SIMON NEWCOMB. 
149 
of routine, but not very important, business was transacted, 
all without incidents which might arouse special attention. 
When the council adjourned Professor Newcomb arose from 
the presiding officer’s chair, put on his overcoat and hat, and 
started to go out of the room. Immediately adjacent to him 
were the coat and the hat of another member of the council. 
These Professor Newcomb proceeded to lay carefully on his 
arm and carry out into the street, until he was followed by 
the owner and reminded that probably one overcoat and hat 
per man would suffice. While all this was going on, greatly 
to the amusement of his colleagues, his face assumed an 
attitude of complete abstraction, and his mental machinery 
was undoubtedly deeply absorbed with some intricate prob- 
lem which had taken possession for the time being. 
In his points of view and in his favorite pursuits Professor 
Newcomb was intensely practical. Although he understood 
the theories of pure mathematics uncommonly well, and 
occasionally made contributions to this domain of thought, 
he was far more deeply interested in the applications of 
analysis to physical science. In this respect he belongs to 
the school so well represented in Germany by Helmholtz 
and Kirchoff and in Great Britain by Stokes and Kelvin. 
It would be a mistake, therefore, to rate him as a mathema- 
tician in the more recent sense of this term. He was rather 
a mathematical physicist whose work lay chiefly in the field 
of dynamical astronomy, and, as was the case with his emi- 
nent contemporaries just mentioned, success in his chosen 
field depended mainly on a masterful knowledge of both 
mathematics and physics. 
This practical turn of mind was well shown also in many 
ways in the ordinary affairs of life and in his writings on 
finance and on political economy, as well as in certain pro- 
jected investigations he did not live to carry out. His clear- 
ness of vision in all these matters shows that he might have 
been equally eminent in other fields than that of astronomy 
if he had devoted a like amount of attention to them. But, 
although he made many fruitful excursions into these other 
fields, his devotion to astronomy never faltered. Behind the 
2i— Bull, Phil. 8oc., Wash., Vol. 15. 
