Simon Newcomb

Simon Newcomb.

Newcomb's grave at Arlington National Cemetery .

Simon Newcomb (born March 12, 1835 in Wallace , † July 11, 1909 in Washington, DC ) was a Canadian astronomer and mathematician .

Life

Simon Newcomb moved at the age of 19 years in the United States , and gained self-taught knowledge of Higher Mathematics and Astronomy at. In 1858 he graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University with Benjamin Peirce . In 1860 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 1869 to the National Academy of Sciences .

In 1861 he became an astronomer and professor of mathematics at the US Navy Observatory in Washington, DC There he worked on theories of planetary motion and the determination of planetary positions as a navigation aid .

During a stay at the Paris observatory in 1870, he was able to improve Peter Andreas Hansen's calculations of the lunar orbit.

Newcomb was involved in the construction of the Great Refractor at the United States Naval Observatory , which was completed in 1873 and which was long the largest in the world.

In 1877 Newcomb became director of the Nautical Almanac Office, and in 1884 professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University . His recalculations of the ephemeris , carried out at this time, were declared the international standard at a conference in Paris in May 1896.

From 1878 he ran a project to measure the speed of light more precisely, initially in collaboration and then in competition with Albert A. Michelson .

1881 he noticed that in the logarithmic tables , the front pages were more worn than the rear. From this he derived the thesis that in a list of random numbers the 1 comes first more often than any other digit. This principle was later named after Frank Benford Benford 's law .

In 1874 he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society . In 1876 he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , 1883 of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and 1888 of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 1881 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1893 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor by France and accepted into the Académie des Sciences . In 1897/1898 he was President of the American Mathematical Society . In 1908 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rome (La théorie du mouvement de la lune: son histoire et son état actuel).

The asteroid (855) Newcombia , the lunar crater Newcomb and the Martian crater Newcomb are named after him.

Publications

• Popular astronomy . German increased edition edited by Rudolph Engelmann. , Published by Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1881

Web links

• Literature by and about Simon Newcomb in the catalog of the German National Library
• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Simon Newcomb. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Publications by S. Newcomb in the Astrophysics Data System
• Obituaries for S. Newcomb in the Astrophysics Data System

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Simon Newcomb in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
2. ^ Simon Newcomb (lexicon entry). In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon. 6th edition, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1905-1909. 1909, Retrieved July 9, 2018 . 
3. ^ Paul Schlyter: Largest optical telescopes of the world. December 10, 2011, accessed July 9, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 178.
5. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed March 24, 2020 . 
6. ^ Simon Newcomb. Retrieved March 28, 2014 . 
7. ^ List of members since 1666: letter N. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 27, 2020 (French).