Simon newcomb biography

Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadian–American astronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidactic polymath.
Simon Newcomb was a Canadian-born American astronomer and mathematician who prepared ephemerides—tables of computed places of celestial.
Simon Newcomb was a Canadian-born mathematician whose work on mathematical astronomy was very important.

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Simon Newcomb

Canadian-American polymath (1835–1909)

For the Australian rower, see Simon Newcomb (rower).

Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadian–Americanastronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidacticpolymath. 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 fictionnovel.

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 Can

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Biography

Simon Newcomb's mother was Emily Prince, the daughter of a New Brunswick magistrate. His father, John Burton Newcomb, was a school master in Canada. John moved around teaching in different parts of the country, particularly in different villages in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and Simon received no formal education other than from his father. Nevertheless his father provided him with an excellent foundation for his future studies. When he was sixteen years old Simon took a job with a herbalist, called Dr Foshay, in New Brunswick. They entered an agreement that Newcomb would serve a five year apprenticeship during which time Foshay would train him in using herbs to treat illnesses. For two years he was an apprentice but became increasingly unhappy about Foshay's unscientific approach, realising that the man was a charlatan. He made the decision to walk out on Foshay and break their agreement.

Indeed he did literally walk out, for Newcomb walked about 120 miles to the port of Calais in Maine where he met the captain of a ship who agreed to take him to Sale

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Today, beyond the Milky Way. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

The year is 1902: America's leading astronomer, Simon Newcomb, asks us to imagine leaving Earth and traveling outward at the speed of light for a hundred thousand years. Once we've made this impossible voyage, what do we see? Only inky black emptiness! But, when we turn around, we see a large fuzzy cloud of light.

The home we left, our galaxy, is the whole of the Milky Way. Newcomb's universe is infinite empty space occupied only by that enormous cloud of stars. Although he doesn't use the word galaxy, it's been in our language for a long time. It was another word for the Milky Way. Chaucer uses the word galaxy. And Milton wrote:

... Seen in the Galaxy, that milky way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powder'd with stars.

Newcomb, who lived from 1835 until 1909, knew that there were other galaxies. But, he died just as we were beginning to comprehend how vast that sea o