Simon Newcomb was born in northern Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1835. His father was a country school teacher, and the family moved about a lot. His schooling came mainly from reading books that his father obtained for him. At age 16 he needed to start work, and after a stint as an apprentice to a dishonest quack of a medical doctor, he became a school teacher and tutor.
Educated by his father. Came to the United States, 1853. Teacher in Maryland., 1854-1856.
Computor on Nautical Almanac, 1857. Graduate Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, Bachelor of Science, 1858. Honorary Doctor of Laws, Columbian, 1874, Yale, 1875, Harvard, 1884, Columbia, 1887, Edinburgh, 1891, Glasgow, 1896, Princeton, 1896, Cracow, 1900, Johns Hopkins, 1902, Toronto, 1904.
Doctor of Science, Heidelberg, 1886, Padua, 1892, Dublin, 1892, Cambridge, 1896. Doctor of Mathematics, Christiania, 1902. Doctor of Civil Law, Oxford, 1899.
Master of Mathematics and Doctor of Natural Philosophy, Leyden, 1875.
In the prelude to the American Civil War, many US Navy staff of Confederate sympathies left the service and, in 1861, Newcomb took advantage of one of the ensuing vacancies to become professor of mathematics and astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, 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 already aware that the table of lunar positions calculated by Peter Andreas Hansen was in error. While in Paris, he realised that, in addition to the data from 1750 to 1838 that Hansen had used, there was further data stretching as far back as 1672. His visit allowed little serenity 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 that led up to the formation of the Paris Commune and which engulfed the Paris Observatory. Newcomb was able to use the "new" data to revise Hansen's tables. He was offered the post of director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1875 but declined, having by now settled that his interests lay in mathematics rather than observation.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. Despite fulfilling a further demanding role as professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University from 1884, he conceived with A. M. W. Downing a plan to resolve much international confusion on the subject. By the time he attended a standardisation 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. A further conference as late as 1950 confirmed Newcomb's constants as the international standard
Newcomb was an autodidact and polymath. He wrote on economics and his Principles of political economy (1885) was described by John Maynard Keynes as "one of those original works which a fresh scientific mind, not perverted by having read too much of the orthodox stuff, is able to produce from time to time in a half-formed subject like economics." He was credited by Irving Fisher with the first-known enunciation of the equation of exchange between money and goods used in the quantity theory of money.He spoke French, German, Italian and Swedish; was an active mountaineer; widely read; and authored a number of popular science books and a science fiction novel, His Wisdom the Defender (1900).
Member, since 1869, vice president, 1883-1889, later foreign secretary National Academy Sciences. Member of every scientific, astronomical or mathematics society of 1st rank in the world. Received Royal Astronomical Society gold medal, 1874, Huygens gold medal, Dutch Society of Sciences, 1478, Royal Society gold medal, 1890.
Married Mary Caroline, d.
