SIMON NEWCOMB
NEWCOMB, SIMON, scientist and author, recognized throughout the world as one of the greatest astronomers of the age, was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia, March 12, 1835. His father, John Burton Newcomb, conducted a school in Wallace and was the early instructor of his gifted son. His mother, Emily (Prince) Newcomb, was a descendant of Elder Brewster of the Mayflower and of Elder John Prince of Hull, who came to Massachusetts Bay colony in 1633.
Simon Newcomb came to the United States when he was eighteen years of age (1853). After teaching in Maryland he removed to Cambridge, Massachusetts and entered the Lawrence scientific school, Harvard University, from which he was graduated with the degree of B.S., 1858. For the next three years he was a graduate student at this institution. While at Cambridge, 1857-61, he was computer on the "American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac." In 1861 he was commissioned by President Lincoln as professor of mathematics in the United States navy and ordered to duty at the government naval observatory, Washington, District of Columbia, where he served from 1861 to 1877. For the next twenty years, as senior professor, he was superintendent of the "American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac" office. On reaching the age limit of service, he was placed on the retired list of the navy, March 12, 1897.
He made the contract with Alvan Clark and Sons at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, to build the twenty-six inch telescope for the United States naval observatory at Washington, District of Columbia, and he supervised its construction and planned the dome in which it was mounted in 1873. He served as secretary of the United States Transit of Venus commission, 1871-84; observed eclipses of the sun at Saskatchewan in 1860 and at Gibraltar in 1870, and had charge of the expedition that visited the Cape of Good Hope in 1882 to observe the transit of Venus. He was professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins university, 1894-1901; and continues emeritus
