MacTutor
In Simon Newcomb the Society has lost one of the greatest of its Associates: a man worthy to rank with the great astronomers of all time. In 1895 he was elected one of the eight Foreign Associate members of the French Institute. This judgment might, perhaps, be questioned as that of a single nation only, but testimony of a worldwide kind was forthcoming in 1898, when the first Bruce Gold Medal was awarded by the votes of the Directors of the Berlin, Greenwich, Harvard, Lick, Paris, and Yerkes observatories: "One name stood forward so prominently in the communications from heads of six leading observatories of the world, that the Directors (of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) could but set the seal of their approval upon the verdict of his peers, and award the first Bruce Medal to Simon Newcomb" (Address of the Pres. Ast. Soc. Pac.). His position in his own country was one of pre-eminence, not merely among astronomers but among men of all sciences; for in 1904 he was chosen President of the International Congress of Arts and Sciences, which assembled at St. Louis.
He reached his pinnacle of greatness by his own efforts. Few men have had less sympathy and encouragement in their early years for talents which only seemed to indicate unfitness. "The skill required on a farm was above my reach, where efficiency in driving oxen was one of the most valued of accomplishments," he writes in his Reminiscences of an Astronomer. "I had, indeed, gradually formed, from reading, a vague conception of a different kind of world—a world of light—where dark-world men who wrote books, and people who knew the men who wrote books, where lived boys who went to college and devoted themselves to learning instead of driving oxen. I longed much to get into this world, but no possibility of doing so presented itself." Into this world he did, however, ultimately make his own way with difficulty. His first venture was a lamentable failure. He hoped to study medicine under a famous physician and found himself the drudge of a quack doctor, from whom he plucked up the courage to fly. He walked fifty miles the first day, and after many hardships ultimately arrived at the coast and worked his passage on a small sailing vessel to his father in Maryland. He became a teacher in a country school (he was then nineteen) for two years, and afterwards in a private family near Washington. The story of his gradually finding his own way, through many hindrances and disappointments, to libraries, to the acquaintance of scientific men, and finally, in 1857, to the Nautical Almanac Office (then at Cambridge, Mass.), is graphically told in the autobiography mentioned above and need not be repeated here. From that point on, his road was smoother, and remaining difficulties crumbled before his great ability. and energy. But it may be doubted whether anything he has done since bears clearer witness to his qualities than his resolute escape from his unpromising beginnings.
Simon Newcomb was born at Wallace in Nova Scotia on March 12, 1835, a few months before the last visit of Halley's Comet; and he did not live to see the comet on its present return, dying at his home in Washington on July 11, 1909. On August 4, 1863, he married Miss Mary Caroline Hassler, granddaughter of the founder of the U.S. Coast Survey, and had several children. His daughter (Dr. Anita Newcomb M'Gee, who distinguished herself as a nurse in the Japanese War) kindly informs us that Newcomb's ancestors were one-fourth Scotch-Irish, one-eighth German, and the rest almost wholly English. All were on the American side of the Atlantic 150 years ago, and some since about 1614, having been a Huguenot family, the first known to have lived in present-day New York City
Newcomb did not remain for many years at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Mass., but while there he gave evidence of his mathematical powers by showing that the orbits of the asteroids had never passed through any common point of intersection, and that they could not therefore be fragments of an exploded planet, as suggested by Olbers. He also graduated B.Sc. at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1858. At the break of the Civil War, several of the U.S. Navy professors of mathematics resigned, owing to the secession of their native states, and Newcomb was the first of those appointed to fill the vacancies (September 21, 1861). We learn from Mr. Archibald's comprehensive bibliography (Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, xi., iii. p. 79) that he had up to this time published 17 papers and reviews of various kinds, and between this date and 1869, when he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, there were a score of others, not only on such astronomical topics as the distribution of the orbits of the asteroids and the theory of Neptune, but on economic subjects, such as "A Critical Examination of our Financial Policy during the Southern Rebellion." In 1869 he became aware of one of the problems that was to dominate his life, the Lunar Theory: the discordance of Hansen's tables, published in 1857, was already becoming apparent, and Newcomb wished to try his hand at discovering the reason. So he applied to be transferred from the Naval Observatory to the Nautical Almanac Office. The superintendent agreed to the work being done, but preferred to have it done at the observatory, and Newcomb accordingly remained in his appointment as observer. But he made a notable contribution to the research on which he had set his heart, almost at once. It occurred to him that there might be available for extending the data used by Hansen, occultations of stars by the Moon in the years before 1750, recorded in the observation books of the Paris Observatory, but not heretofore published. His successful search for them was a dramatic incident. When the idea first occurred to him, the Franco-Prussian war was going on and he could not visit Paris; and when in March 1871 he entered it by "almost the first train that passed the German lines," he spent six weeks at the observatory while "the city was under the reign of the Commune and besieged by the national forces. The studies had to be made within hearing of the besieging guns." But the search was triumphant; an abundance of occultations had been observed (though apparently with no particular object in view at the time), and the "history of the Moon's motion was extended back from 1750 to 1675, and, with a less degree of accuracy, 30 years farther still. Hansen's tables were found to deviate from the truth in 1675 and subsequent years to a surprising extent; but the cause of the deviation is not unfolded even now." Interest thus roused in the tables of the Moon naturally extended itself to those of the planets; And when (in 1877) Newcomb was appointed Superintendent of the American Ephemeris, he devoted himself for a quarter of a century, "with all the force he could spare, to the work of deriving improved values of the fundamental elements and embodying them in new tables of celestial motions." "This gigantic purpose," writes Ormond Stone, "he lived to see completed as far as the major planets were concerned." Reserving for his own consideration the four inner and two outer planets, he assigned the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn to Dr. G. W. Hill. The results for the four inner planets were published as a supplement to the American Ephemeris for 1897, and it was found that observed discrepancies could be accounted for by assuming a ring of matter lying between the orbits of Mercury and Venus, though Newcomb did not lay much stress on the hypothesis.
But this is anticipating. Before he left the U.S. Naval Observatory for the N.A. Office, he took a prominent share in three great enterprises, to each of which he devotes a chapter of his Reminiscences. It was determined to erect a large telescope at the observatory, and much of the consequent work fell to Newcomb, who saw it completed and worked with it to good purpose before handing it over, on his departure from the observatory, to Asaph Hall, who discovered the satellites of Mars with it. This sensational result of the erection of the telescope is well known; it is not so well known how Newcomb had tried to obtain such an instrument and failed until the accidental visit of the young son of Mr. Cyrus Field, and his report at his father's dinner table of the poor equipment of the observatory startled some influential people into action.
The second of the three chapters mentioned above deals with the transits of Venus. Newcomb's work in discussing the old transits (in the course of which he dispersed the cloud of suspicion under which the memory of Father Hell had lain for a century) and in organizing that of 1874 was of the first order. On the unfavorable results becoming known, he and E. C. Pickering voted against any great expedition in 1882, but were overruled, and Newcomb thereupon took charge of the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope
The third chapter is on the Lick Observatory. Newcomb was consulted in 1874 and visited Europe to see what prospects there were of glass for the lenses. He also nominated the first director of the observatory, E. S. Holden. He mentions some interesting correspondence with Mr. Lick, "who did not see why such an elaborate and expensive mounting as that proposed was necessary, and thought that the object-glass might be mounted on the simplest kind of pole or tower which would admit of its having the requisite motions in connection with the eyepiece." He also suggested the trial expedition of S. W. Burnham to the mountain-top, which produced the report of 42 first-class nights, and only 7 classified as low as medium. Newcomb himself visited the summit for three nights.
Meanwhile, his reduction of the lunar observations collected in Paris occupied him for six years (1871-77) and was published in 1878. He then settled down to the great work on the planets and the direction of the American Nautical Almanac Office. He had already (in 1874) been awarded our Medal for his research on the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, and the President of the day, Professor Cayley, drew attention to various other researches of importance, especially a theoretical memoir on the problem of three bodies, which he characterized as being, "from the boldness of the conception and the beauty of the results, a very remarkable one, constituting an important addition to theoretical dynamics." Thus Newcomb was well equipped for the work before him—probably better than any man of his generation There was an immense amount of labour ahead: "It seems hard upon the maker of a set of planetary tables," said Cayley in 1874, "that he should not at least have, ready to hand for comparison with theory, a single and entire series of observations of the planet. ... I cannot help thinking that there should be some confederation of observatories or central calculating board for publishing the lunar and planetary observations, etc., reduced to a concordant system." The needed uniformity is not yet attained, but what progress has been made towards its attainment is largely due to Newcomb himself, and he was doubtless stimulated to action in this direction by the great labour of reducing existing observations to a homogeneous system. He was led incidentally to the formation of a great fundamental catalogue of 1098 stars, and the adoption of a set of fundamental constants. Accounts of this great work have appeared from time to time in our Council Reports (see, for instance, M.N., lvi. p. 267).
Newcomb was superannuated in 1897, but his activities suffered no diminution. He returned to the lunar theory, and had the great satisfaction of completing his survey of the existing state of the problem before his death. His conclusions are summarised in a paper contributed to the Monthly Notices just a year ago, and illustrated by a striking diagram. He finds that there are outstanding fluctuations, and writes:-
"I regard these fluctuations as the most enigmatical phenomenon presented by the celestial motions, being so difficult to account for by the action of any known causes that we cannot but suspect them to arise from some action in nature hitherto unknown. At present I see nothing more to do than to invite the attention of investigators to this most curious subject."
But he also turned his attention to solar physics, and inquired whether the periodicity of the solar activity is strict, or only approximate, deciding in the former sense. He went on to an investigation of our weather, and reached the conclusion that all the phenomena of temperature, rainfall, and winds are due to purely terrestrial causes, and that no changes in the Sun's radiation affect them, except perhaps a fluctuation of o2 C. in temperature with the sun-spot period (Trans. Am. Phil. Soc., n.s., xxi., pt. v. p. 379). But the work of Mr. C. G. Abbot on solar radiation, published at about the same time, does not altogether confirm these views.
It is impossible to give a complete account of Newcomb's activities in a brief notice such as the present. His great works, such as the Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris, are too well known to need enumeration. The publication began in 1882, but some of the papers are of earlier date. The bibliography of Mr. Archibald tabulates the titles of 376 papers and writings, including several books. His Popular Astronomy has been widely known for many years, and was translated into German, Russian, Norwegian, Bohemian, Dutch, and Japanese. A recent work, The Stars: a Study of the Universe, is of no less merit. His own Reminiscences (Houghton Mifflin, 1903), from which many quotations have been made above, is a mine of wealth in scientific history. His chief work was, of course, the collation of observations of the Moon and planets, so as to rectify the tables: but he also wrote novels, and text-books on finance; articles on labour and currency questions, and on theology. A text-book on algebra, which his daughter was studying, appeared to him so unsatisfactory that he wrote her out a series of lessons himself, which were then collected into a successful schoolbook, followed in due course by others on trigonometry and calculus. His textbook, A Compendium of Spherical Astronomy, published in 1906, is a most valuable work of reference.
His Presidential Address in 1904 to the International Congress of Arts and Sciences on "The Evolution of the Scientific Investigator" afforded a striking example of the breadth of his outlook, his conception of the meaning of science, and his divination of its true origin.
"The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as 'useful knowledge.' His domain is as broad as nature itself, and he best fulfills his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying the knowledge he gives to the world." "While giving all due honor to the great inventors, let us remember that the first place is that of the great investigators"—by such words as these he declares his faith in the true nobility of modern scientific investigation His idea of its origin is indicated by the names of the men to whom he gives precedence: Luther, Copernicus, Leonardo, Columbus, and Gutenberg, all born in the fifteenth century; and his reasons, if not sufficiently obvious from the association of the names, will be clear enough from the terms in which he speaks of one of them: "Luther, the greatest thought-stirrer of them all, does not come in as a scientific investigator, but as the great loosener of chains which had so fettered the intellect of men that they dared not think otherwise than as the authorities thought." The highest place was assigned by Newcomb to these men because of his conviction that their existence was vital, that the course of events after them differed from that before them "as a living tree from a dead one" with a difference like that made by a "drop of blood in the wrong place, which some one has told us makes all the difference between a philosopher and a maniac." No one was more willing than Newcomb to "banish cataclysms to theological limbo, and view nature as a sleepless plodder," but he is emphatic in reminding us that this is not the whole truth. "The building of a ship, from the time that her keel is laid until she is making her way across the ocean, is a slow and gradual process, yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a new era in her history. It is the moment when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was designed."
Thus Newcomb stated his conviction that the fifteenth century was such a cataclysmic epoch in the history of the human race. This public utterance at the summit of his career gives us the key to his own personality; he was not only a great astronomer, not only a great man of science, but also an apostle of freedom of thought in all directions, a worthy and eminent representative of modern experimental science. His sympathies with enterprise were broad; witness his becoming the first President of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1885. He loved to shake off limitations; we have seen how he broke the fetters which had bound accepted lunar observations, and adding a century to their extent. When Küstner and Chandler announced a variation of latitude to a skeptical world of theoretical astronomers, it was Newcomb who first freed his thoughts from old traditions sufficient to find the theoretical clue. Sometimes he carried his wish for the removal of limitations to lengths where others could not follow him. When photographs of the nebulosity around Nova Persei showed that something was moving with great velocity, Newcomb was quick to welcome the overstepping of limits hitherto assigned to the velocity of celestial motions, and was frankly disappointed when another explanation was forthcoming in the travelling of illumination merely. It may be surprising that when, at the end of his life, he found that the Moon refused complete allegiance to the law of gravitation, as far as he could determine the circumstances, he rather rejoiced in the rebellion, though he yielded to none in his respect for the majesty of that law.
His visits to Europe were frequent, and he was a welcome friend in all the great cities, where he was generally either an honorary graduate of the university or a Foreign Associate of the society or academy. He was elected a Foreign Associate of this Society in 1872; of the Royal Society in 1877; and of the Royal Institution at the Faraday Centenary in 1891. He received our Medal in 1874 and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1890. He was passionately fond of the Swiss mountains. At one time it seemed as though his climbing were at an end, for he was apparently crippled, though he had undergone two severe operations in the hope of a cure. Ultimately, Dr Putnam cured him with psychotherapy, and he was able to resume his climbing, to his great delight. It was only shortly before his death that serious trouble returned, the seeds of which may have existed in the earlier time. He did not escape long months of agony, heroically borne, but worked to the end at his lunar computations. It was a touching mark of the regard in which he was held that the naval surgeon who attended him regularly (he had, of course, specialist advice also), and who had reached the age for retirement, was continued in his office on full pay, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, "so long as Professor Newcomb needed him." At his death, in July, Newcomb was accorded a military funeral, with the rank of Rear Admiral, which had been granted by a special act of Congress three years before.
H. H. T.
He reached his pinnacle of greatness by his own efforts. Few men have had less sympathy and encouragement in their early years for talents which only seemed to indicate unfitness. "The skill required on a farm was above my reach, where efficiency in driving oxen was one of the most valued of accomplishments," he writes in his Reminiscences of an Astronomer. "I had, indeed, gradually formed, from reading, a vague conception of a different kind of world—a world of light—where dark-world men who wrote books, and people who knew the men who wrote books, where lived boys who went to college and devoted themselves to learning instead of driving oxen. I longed much to get into this world, but no possibility of doing so presented itself." Into this world he did, however, ultimately make his own way with difficulty. His first venture was a lamentable failure. He hoped to study medicine under a famous physician and found himself the drudge of a quack doctor, from whom he plucked up the courage to fly. He walked fifty miles the first day, and after many hardships ultimately arrived at the coast and worked his passage on a small sailing vessel to his father in Maryland. He became a teacher in a country school (he was then nineteen) for two years, and afterwards in a private family near Washington. The story of his gradually finding his own way, through many hindrances and disappointments, to libraries, to the acquaintance of scientific men, and finally, in 1857, to the Nautical Almanac Office (then at Cambridge, Mass.), is graphically told in the autobiography mentioned above and need not be repeated here. From that point on, his road was smoother, and remaining difficulties crumbled before his great ability. and energy. But it may be doubted whether anything he has done since bears clearer witness to his qualities than his resolute escape from his unpromising beginnings.
Simon Newcomb was born at Wallace in Nova Scotia on March 12, 1835, a few months before the last visit of Halley's Comet; and he did not live to see the comet on its present return, dying at his home in Washington on July 11, 1909. On August 4, 1863, he married Miss Mary Caroline Hassler, granddaughter of the founder of the U.S. Coast Survey, and had several children. His daughter (Dr. Anita Newcomb M'Gee, who distinguished herself as a nurse in the Japanese War) kindly informs us that Newcomb's ancestors were one-fourth Scotch-Irish, one-eighth German, and the rest almost wholly English. All were on the American side of the Atlantic 150 years ago, and some since about 1614, having been a Huguenot family, the first known to have lived in present-day New York City
Newcomb did not remain for many years at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Mass., but while there he gave evidence of his mathematical powers by showing that the orbits of the asteroids had never passed through any common point of intersection, and that they could not therefore be fragments of an exploded planet, as suggested by Olbers. He also graduated B.Sc. at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1858. At the break of the Civil War, several of the U.S. Navy professors of mathematics resigned, owing to the secession of their native states, and Newcomb was the first of those appointed to fill the vacancies (September 21, 1861). We learn from Mr. Archibald's comprehensive bibliography (Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, xi., iii. p. 79) that he had up to this time published 17 papers and reviews of various kinds, and between this date and 1869, when he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, there were a score of others, not only on such astronomical topics as the distribution of the orbits of the asteroids and the theory of Neptune, but on economic subjects, such as "A Critical Examination of our Financial Policy during the Southern Rebellion." In 1869 he became aware of one of the problems that was to dominate his life, the Lunar Theory: the discordance of Hansen's tables, published in 1857, was already becoming apparent, and Newcomb wished to try his hand at discovering the reason. So he applied to be transferred from the Naval Observatory to the Nautical Almanac Office. The superintendent agreed to the work being done, but preferred to have it done at the observatory, and Newcomb accordingly remained in his appointment as observer. But he made a notable contribution to the research on which he had set his heart, almost at once. It occurred to him that there might be available for extending the data used by Hansen, occultations of stars by the Moon in the years before 1750, recorded in the observation books of the Paris Observatory, but not heretofore published. His successful search for them was a dramatic incident. When the idea first occurred to him, the Franco-Prussian war was going on and he could not visit Paris; and when in March 1871 he entered it by "almost the first train that passed the German lines," he spent six weeks at the observatory while "the city was under the reign of the Commune and besieged by the national forces. The studies had to be made within hearing of the besieging guns." But the search was triumphant; an abundance of occultations had been observed (though apparently with no particular object in view at the time), and the "history of the Moon's motion was extended back from 1750 to 1675, and, with a less degree of accuracy, 30 years farther still. Hansen's tables were found to deviate from the truth in 1675 and subsequent years to a surprising extent; but the cause of the deviation is not unfolded even now." Interest thus roused in the tables of the Moon naturally extended itself to those of the planets; And when (in 1877) Newcomb was appointed Superintendent of the American Ephemeris, he devoted himself for a quarter of a century, "with all the force he could spare, to the work of deriving improved values of the fundamental elements and embodying them in new tables of celestial motions." "This gigantic purpose," writes Ormond Stone, "he lived to see completed as far as the major planets were concerned." Reserving for his own consideration the four inner and two outer planets, he assigned the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn to Dr. G. W. Hill. The results for the four inner planets were published as a supplement to the American Ephemeris for 1897, and it was found that observed discrepancies could be accounted for by assuming a ring of matter lying between the orbits of Mercury and Venus, though Newcomb did not lay much stress on the hypothesis.
But this is anticipating. Before he left the U.S. Naval Observatory for the N.A. Office, he took a prominent share in three great enterprises, to each of which he devotes a chapter of his Reminiscences. It was determined to erect a large telescope at the observatory, and much of the consequent work fell to Newcomb, who saw it completed and worked with it to good purpose before handing it over, on his departure from the observatory, to Asaph Hall, who discovered the satellites of Mars with it. This sensational result of the erection of the telescope is well known; it is not so well known how Newcomb had tried to obtain such an instrument and failed until the accidental visit of the young son of Mr. Cyrus Field, and his report at his father's dinner table of the poor equipment of the observatory startled some influential people into action.
The second of the three chapters mentioned above deals with the transits of Venus. Newcomb's work in discussing the old transits (in the course of which he dispersed the cloud of suspicion under which the memory of Father Hell had lain for a century) and in organizing that of 1874 was of the first order. On the unfavorable results becoming known, he and E. C. Pickering voted against any great expedition in 1882, but were overruled, and Newcomb thereupon took charge of the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope
The third chapter is on the Lick Observatory. Newcomb was consulted in 1874 and visited Europe to see what prospects there were of glass for the lenses. He also nominated the first director of the observatory, E. S. Holden. He mentions some interesting correspondence with Mr. Lick, "who did not see why such an elaborate and expensive mounting as that proposed was necessary, and thought that the object-glass might be mounted on the simplest kind of pole or tower which would admit of its having the requisite motions in connection with the eyepiece." He also suggested the trial expedition of S. W. Burnham to the mountain-top, which produced the report of 42 first-class nights, and only 7 classified as low as medium. Newcomb himself visited the summit for three nights.
Meanwhile, his reduction of the lunar observations collected in Paris occupied him for six years (1871-77) and was published in 1878. He then settled down to the great work on the planets and the direction of the American Nautical Almanac Office. He had already (in 1874) been awarded our Medal for his research on the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, and the President of the day, Professor Cayley, drew attention to various other researches of importance, especially a theoretical memoir on the problem of three bodies, which he characterized as being, "from the boldness of the conception and the beauty of the results, a very remarkable one, constituting an important addition to theoretical dynamics." Thus Newcomb was well equipped for the work before him—probably better than any man of his generation There was an immense amount of labour ahead: "It seems hard upon the maker of a set of planetary tables," said Cayley in 1874, "that he should not at least have, ready to hand for comparison with theory, a single and entire series of observations of the planet. ... I cannot help thinking that there should be some confederation of observatories or central calculating board for publishing the lunar and planetary observations, etc., reduced to a concordant system." The needed uniformity is not yet attained, but what progress has been made towards its attainment is largely due to Newcomb himself, and he was doubtless stimulated to action in this direction by the great labour of reducing existing observations to a homogeneous system. He was led incidentally to the formation of a great fundamental catalogue of 1098 stars, and the adoption of a set of fundamental constants. Accounts of this great work have appeared from time to time in our Council Reports (see, for instance, M.N., lvi. p. 267).
Newcomb was superannuated in 1897, but his activities suffered no diminution. He returned to the lunar theory, and had the great satisfaction of completing his survey of the existing state of the problem before his death. His conclusions are summarised in a paper contributed to the Monthly Notices just a year ago, and illustrated by a striking diagram. He finds that there are outstanding fluctuations, and writes:-
"I regard these fluctuations as the most enigmatical phenomenon presented by the celestial motions, being so difficult to account for by the action of any known causes that we cannot but suspect them to arise from some action in nature hitherto unknown. At present I see nothing more to do than to invite the attention of investigators to this most curious subject."
But he also turned his attention to solar physics, and inquired whether the periodicity of the solar activity is strict, or only approximate, deciding in the former sense. He went on to an investigation of our weather, and reached the conclusion that all the phenomena of temperature, rainfall, and winds are due to purely terrestrial causes, and that no changes in the Sun's radiation affect them, except perhaps a fluctuation of o2 C. in temperature with the sun-spot period (Trans. Am. Phil. Soc., n.s., xxi., pt. v. p. 379). But the work of Mr. C. G. Abbot on solar radiation, published at about the same time, does not altogether confirm these views.
It is impossible to give a complete account of Newcomb's activities in a brief notice such as the present. His great works, such as the Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris, are too well known to need enumeration. The publication began in 1882, but some of the papers are of earlier date. The bibliography of Mr. Archibald tabulates the titles of 376 papers and writings, including several books. His Popular Astronomy has been widely known for many years, and was translated into German, Russian, Norwegian, Bohemian, Dutch, and Japanese. A recent work, The Stars: a Study of the Universe, is of no less merit. His own Reminiscences (Houghton Mifflin, 1903), from which many quotations have been made above, is a mine of wealth in scientific history. His chief work was, of course, the collation of observations of the Moon and planets, so as to rectify the tables: but he also wrote novels, and text-books on finance; articles on labour and currency questions, and on theology. A text-book on algebra, which his daughter was studying, appeared to him so unsatisfactory that he wrote her out a series of lessons himself, which were then collected into a successful schoolbook, followed in due course by others on trigonometry and calculus. His textbook, A Compendium of Spherical Astronomy, published in 1906, is a most valuable work of reference.
His Presidential Address in 1904 to the International Congress of Arts and Sciences on "The Evolution of the Scientific Investigator" afforded a striking example of the breadth of his outlook, his conception of the meaning of science, and his divination of its true origin.
"The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as 'useful knowledge.' His domain is as broad as nature itself, and he best fulfills his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying the knowledge he gives to the world." "While giving all due honor to the great inventors, let us remember that the first place is that of the great investigators"—by such words as these he declares his faith in the true nobility of modern scientific investigation His idea of its origin is indicated by the names of the men to whom he gives precedence: Luther, Copernicus, Leonardo, Columbus, and Gutenberg, all born in the fifteenth century; and his reasons, if not sufficiently obvious from the association of the names, will be clear enough from the terms in which he speaks of one of them: "Luther, the greatest thought-stirrer of them all, does not come in as a scientific investigator, but as the great loosener of chains which had so fettered the intellect of men that they dared not think otherwise than as the authorities thought." The highest place was assigned by Newcomb to these men because of his conviction that their existence was vital, that the course of events after them differed from that before them "as a living tree from a dead one" with a difference like that made by a "drop of blood in the wrong place, which some one has told us makes all the difference between a philosopher and a maniac." No one was more willing than Newcomb to "banish cataclysms to theological limbo, and view nature as a sleepless plodder," but he is emphatic in reminding us that this is not the whole truth. "The building of a ship, from the time that her keel is laid until she is making her way across the ocean, is a slow and gradual process, yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a new era in her history. It is the moment when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was designed."
Thus Newcomb stated his conviction that the fifteenth century was such a cataclysmic epoch in the history of the human race. This public utterance at the summit of his career gives us the key to his own personality; he was not only a great astronomer, not only a great man of science, but also an apostle of freedom of thought in all directions, a worthy and eminent representative of modern experimental science. His sympathies with enterprise were broad; witness his becoming the first President of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1885. He loved to shake off limitations; we have seen how he broke the fetters which had bound accepted lunar observations, and adding a century to their extent. When Küstner and Chandler announced a variation of latitude to a skeptical world of theoretical astronomers, it was Newcomb who first freed his thoughts from old traditions sufficient to find the theoretical clue. Sometimes he carried his wish for the removal of limitations to lengths where others could not follow him. When photographs of the nebulosity around Nova Persei showed that something was moving with great velocity, Newcomb was quick to welcome the overstepping of limits hitherto assigned to the velocity of celestial motions, and was frankly disappointed when another explanation was forthcoming in the travelling of illumination merely. It may be surprising that when, at the end of his life, he found that the Moon refused complete allegiance to the law of gravitation, as far as he could determine the circumstances, he rather rejoiced in the rebellion, though he yielded to none in his respect for the majesty of that law.
His visits to Europe were frequent, and he was a welcome friend in all the great cities, where he was generally either an honorary graduate of the university or a Foreign Associate of the society or academy. He was elected a Foreign Associate of this Society in 1872; of the Royal Society in 1877; and of the Royal Institution at the Faraday Centenary in 1891. He received our Medal in 1874 and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1890. He was passionately fond of the Swiss mountains. At one time it seemed as though his climbing were at an end, for he was apparently crippled, though he had undergone two severe operations in the hope of a cure. Ultimately, Dr Putnam cured him with psychotherapy, and he was able to resume his climbing, to his great delight. It was only shortly before his death that serious trouble returned, the seeds of which may have existed in the earlier time. He did not escape long months of agony, heroically borne, but worked to the end at his lunar computations. It was a touching mark of the regard in which he was held that the naval surgeon who attended him regularly (he had, of course, specialist advice also), and who had reached the age for retirement, was continued in his office on full pay, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, "so long as Professor Newcomb needed him." At his death, in July, Newcomb was accorded a military funeral, with the rank of Rear Admiral, which had been granted by a special act of Congress three years before.
H. H. T.
XXX's obituary appeared in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 70:4 (1910), 304-310.