Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcomb was a Canadian–American astronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidactic polymath. He served as Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins University. Born in Nova Scotia, at the age of 19 Newcomb left an apprenticeship to join his father in Massachusetts, where the latter was teaching.
Though Newcomb had little conventional schooling, he completed a B.S. at Harvard in 1858. He later made important contributions to timekeeping, as well as to other fields in applied mathematics, such as economics and statistics. Fluent in several languages, he also wrote and published several popular science books and a science fiction novel.
Biography
Early life
Simon Newcomb was born in the town of Wallace, Nova Scotia. His parents were John Burton Newcomb and his wife Emily Prince. His father was an itinerant school teacher, and frequently moved in order to teach in different parts of Canada, particularly in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Through his mother, Simon Newcomb was a distant cousin of William Henry Steeves, a Canadian Father of Confederation. Their immigrant ancestor in that line was Heinrich Stief, who immigrated from Germany and settled in New Brunswick about 1760.Newcomb seems to have had little conventional schooling and was taught by his father. He also had a short apprenticeship in 1851 to Dr. Foshay, a charlatan herbalist in New Brunswick. But his father gave him an excellent foundation for the youth's future studies. Newcomb was apprenticed to Dr. Foshay at the age of 16. Their agreement was that Newcomb would serve a five-year apprenticeship, during which time Foshay would train him in using herbs to treat illnesses. After two years Newcomb had become increasingly unhappy and disillusioned, as he realized that Foshay had an unscientific approach and was a charlatan. He left Foshay and broke their agreement. He walked the to the port of Calais, Maine. There he met a ship's captain who agreed to take him to Salem, Massachusetts, where his father had moved for a teaching job. In about 1854, Newcomb joined his father in Salem, and the two journeyed together to Maryland.
Newcomb taught for two years in Maryland, from 1854 to 1856; for the first year in a country school in Massey's Cross Roads, Kent County, then for a year nearby in Sudlersville in Queen Anne's County. Both were located in the largely rural area of the Eastern Shore. In his spare time Newcomb studied a variety of subjects, such as political economy and religion, but his deepest studies were made in mathematics and astronomy.
In particular he read Isaac Newton's Principia at this time. In 1856 Newcomb took a position as a private tutor close to Washington, DC. He often traveled to the city to study mathematics in its libraries. He borrowed a copy of Nathaniel Bowditch's translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace's Traité de mécanique céleste from the library of the Smithsonian Institution, but found the mathematics beyond him.
Newcomb independently studied mathematics and physics. For a time he supported himself by teaching before becoming a human computer at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1857. At around the same time, he enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, graduating with a BSc in 1858.
Peirce family
Newcomb studied mathematics under Benjamin Peirce, who also often invited Newcomb to his home. Newcomb's biographer Brent said in his 1993 book that Newcomb developed a dislike of Peirce's son, Charles Sanders Peirce and was accused of the "successful destruction" of C. S. Peirce's career. In particular, Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins University, was said to have been on the point of awarding tenure to C. S. Peirce, before Newcomb intervened behind the scenes to dissuade him. Brent says that about 20 years later, Newcomb similarly influenced the Carnegie Institution Trustees to deny a Carnegie grant to C. S. Peirce. This prevented Peirce from publishing his life's work. The grant was supported by Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, William James, and others, who wrote to support it. Newcomb's motivation has been speculated to have been that, despite his being "no doubt quite bright", "like Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus he also had just enough talent to recognize he was not a genius and just enough pettiness to resent someone who was". Additionally "an intensely devout and literal-minded Christian of rigid moral standards", he was appalled by what he considered Peirce's personal shortcomings, making intolerable to Newcomb the fact that he had been reliant on the patronage of the father of a man he considered contemptible.Career in astronomy
In the prelude to the American Civil War, many US Navy staff with Southern backgrounds left the service. In 1861, Newcomb took advantage of a vacancy and was hired as professor of mathematics and astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, in Washington D.C. Newcomb set to work on the measurement of the position of the planets as an aid to navigation, becoming increasingly interested in theories of planetary motion.By the time Newcomb visited Paris, France, in 1870, he was aware that the table of lunar positions calculated by Peter Andreas Hansen was in error. While in Paris, he realized that, in addition to the data from 1750 to 1838 that Hansen had used, there was earlier data documented as far back as 1672. But he had little time for analysis as he witnessed the defeat of French emperor Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War and the coup that ended the Second French Empire. Newcomb managed to escape from the city during the ensuing rioting; it led to the formation of the Paris Commune and engulfed even the Paris Observatory. Newcomb used the "new" data to revise Hansen's tables.
In 1875 he was offered the post of director of the Harvard College Observatory but he declined, having by now settled that his interests lay in mathematics rather than observation.
Director of the Nautical Almanac Office
In 1877 he became director of the Nautical Almanac Office where, ably assisted by George William Hill, he embarked on a program of recalculation of all the major astronomical constants.At this time he was elected to honorary membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, in 1887.
From 1884 he also fulfilled a demanding role as professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, continuing, however, to reside at Washington.
With A. M. W. Downing, Newcomb conceived a plan to resolve much international confusion on the subject of astronomical constants. By the time he attended a standardization conference in Paris, France, in May 1896, the international consensus was that all ephemerides should be based on Newcomb's calculations: Newcomb's Tables of the Sun. As late as 1950, another conference confirmed Newcomb's constants as the international standard.
Personal life
During the American Civil War, Newcomb married Mary Caroline Hassler on August 4, 1863. The couple had three daughters, and a son who died in infancy. Mary Caroline Hassler's parents were US Navy Surgeon Dr. Charles Augustus Hassler and his wife. Her paternal grandfather was Ferdinand Hassler, the first Superintendent of the Coast Survey.Newcomb died in Washington, D.C., on July 11, 1909, of bladder cancer. He was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery with President William Howard Taft in attendance.
Newcomb's daughter Anita Newcomb McGee became a medical doctor and founded the Army Nurse Corps. She received the Spanish War Service Medal for her services during the Spanish–American War. For her later work in Japan, she was awarded the Japanese Imperial Order of the Precious Crown, the Japanese Red Cross decoration, and two Russo-Japanese War medals from the Japanese government. She was buried next to her father with full military honors.
Newcomb's daughter Anna Josepha studied at the Art Students' League in New York. She was active in the suffrage movement. In 1912, she organized the first Cornwall meeting in support of voting rights for women. Josepha Newcomb married Edward Baldwin Whitney, who was the son of Professor William Dwight Whitney and his wife, and the grandson of US Senator and Connecticut Governor Roger Sherman Baldwin. He served as Assistant US Attorney General. Their grandson Hassler Whitney became a mathematician and professor.