39 Facts About Simon Newcomb

Simon Newcomb served as Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins University.

Simon Newcomb later made important contributions to timekeeping, as well as to other fields in applied mathematics, such as economics and statistics.

Simon Newcomb was born in the town of Wallace, Nova Scotia.

Simon Newcomb's parents were John Burton Newcomb and his wife Emily Prince.

Simon Newcomb's 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.

Simon Newcomb seems to have had little conventional schooling and was taught by his father.

Simon Newcomb had a short apprenticeship in 1851 to Dr Foshay, a charlatan herbalist in New Brunswick.

Simon Newcomb was apprenticed to Dr Foshay at the age of 16.

Simon Newcomb walked the 120 miles to the port of Calais, Maine.

Simon 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.

In 1856 Simon Newcomb took a position as a private tutor close to Washington, DC.

Simon Newcomb often traveled to the city to study mathematics in its libraries.

Simon Newcomb borrowed a copy of Nathaniel Bowditch's translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace's Traite de mecanique celeste from the library of the Smithsonian Institution, but found the mathematics beyond him.

Simon Newcomb studied mathematics under Benjamin Peirce, who often invited the poor scholar to his home.

Peirce, before Simon Newcomb intervened behind the scenes to dissuade him.

Simon Newcomb's motivation has been speculated to have been that, despite he being "no doubt quite bright", "like Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus he had just enough talent to recognize he was not a genius and just enough pettiness to resent someone who was".

In 1861, Simon Newcomb took advantage of a vacancy and was hired as professor of mathematics and astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, in Washington DC Simon 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.

Simon 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.

Simon Newcomb died in Washington, DC, on July 11,1909, of bladder cancer.

Simon Newcomb was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery with President William Howard Taft in attendance.

Simon Newcomb was buried next to her father with full military honors.

Josepha Simon 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.

In 1878, Simon Newcomb had started planning for a new and precise measurement of the speed of light.

Simon Newcomb believed it was needed to account for the exact values of many astronomical constants.

Simon Newcomb had already started developing a refinement of the method of Leon Foucault when he received a letter from Albert Abraham Michelson, a young naval officer and physicist who was planning such a measurement.

Michelson had left to start his own project by the time Simon Newcomb arranged a second set of measurements between the observatory and the Washington Monument.

In 1881, Simon Newcomb discovered the statistical principle now known as Benford's law.

Simon Newcomb observed that the earlier pages of logarithm books, used at that time to carry out logarithmic calculations, were far more worn than the later pages.

In 1891, within months of Seth Carlo Chandler's discovery of the 14-month variation of latitude, now referred to as the Chandler wobble, Simon Newcomb explained the apparent conflict between the observed motion and predicted period of the wobble.

Simon Newcomb used the variation of latitude observations to estimate the elasticity of Earth, finding it to be slightly more rigid than steel.

Simon Newcomb spoke French, German, Italian and Swedish; was an active mountaineer; and read widely.

Simon Newcomb wrote a number of popular science books and a science fiction novel, His Wisdom the Defender.

Simon Newcomb was the first person to observe the geophysical phenomenon Airglow, in 1901.

Simon Newcomb therefore concluded that it could never carry the weight of a man.

Simon Newcomb was particularly critical of the work of Samuel Pierpont Langley, who claimed that he could build a flying machine powered by a steam engine, but whose initial efforts at flight were public failures.

Simon Newcomb was not aware of the Wright Brothers' efforts, whose work was done in relative obscurity and apparently unaware of the internal combustion engine's better power-to-weight ratio.

When Simon Newcomb heard about the Wrights' flight in 1908, he was quick to accept it.

Simon Newcomb favored the development of rotating wing and airships that would float in the air.

Simon Newcomb was the first president of the American Society for Psychical Research.