Simon Newcomb

Simon Newcomb (March 12th 1835 - July 11th 1909) is a Astronome and Mathématicien. He is born with Wallace in Nova Scotia, Newcomb did not have education apart from a short training with a charlatan herbalist in 1851.

Life

Wire of Emily Prince and an itinerant teacher John Burton Newcomb, Simon Newcomb studies the Mathématiques and the Physique in Autodidacte, it is financed while teaching before becoming calculator with the Nautical Almanac Office with Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1857. At the same time he studies with the Lawrence Scientific School of the Université Harvard and obtains its first diploma in 1858.

In prelude of the American Civil War of many members of the US Navy of confederated sympathies leaves the service and in 1861 Newcomb thus obtains a station of Mathématicien and vacant Astronome to the United States Naval Observatory with Washington. Newcomb works on the measure of location of planets like a help with navigation and is interested more and more in the theories of the movement of planets.

At the time or Newcomb visits Paris in 1870, it is already with the current that the tables of the lunar positions calculated by Peter Andreas Hansen contain errors. While it is in Paris it carries out, in addition of the data of 1750 with 1838 qu ' Hansen used, that there exist data also going up far 1672 with the Observatoire from Paris. Its visit does not enable him to analyze the data, disturbed by the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-German Guerre of 1870 and the Coup d'etat which followed. Newcomb successful to escape from Paris during the riots which lead to the formation of the common of Paris. It is then possible for him to use the new given to correct the tables.

One offers to him to take the direction of the Harvard College Observatory in 1875 but he refuses, preferring to devote itself to mathematics rather than with the observation.

In 1877 he becomes director of the Nautical Almanac Office, or, assisted by George William Hill, he begins a program from recalculation of the principal astronomical constants. In addition to its post of professor of mathematics and astronomy to the Université Johns Hopkins it conceives with Arthur Matthew Weld Downing a plan to solve the divergences between the various nations of the values of these constants. It takes part in a conference in Paris in May 1896 or the international consensus is that all the éphémérides must be based on those calculated by Newcomb. Another conference in the Années 1950 confirms the constants of Newcomb like international standard.

In 1878, Newcomb starts to plan a news and specifies determination of the Speed of light which is necessary for the determination of many astronomical constants. It already started to refine the method used by Leon Foucault when it receives a letter of the young naval officer and Physicien Albert Michelson which also starts to him to test to obtain a precise value of this constant. In 1880 Michelson attends the first measurements of Newcomb with instruments located at Fort Myer and the United States Naval Observatory located then close to the Potomac. Continuous Michelson on its side its measurements between the observatory and the Washington Monument while Newcomb undertakes a second series of it. Michelson publishes its first results in 1880 but they differ appreciably from those of Newcomb. In 1883 Michelson revises them with values closer to those of Newcomb.

In 1881, Newcomb discovers the known statistical principle under the name of Loi of Benford, when he discovers that the first pages of the books containing of the tables logarithmic curve are more worn than the following pages. This leads it to formulate the principle that for any list of numbers taken in a unit of arbitrary data, more numbers tend to have their first figure equal to one than of other figures.

In 1891 Seth Carlo Chandler nowadays discovers a variation of the latitude of a 433 days periodicity, known under the name of Mouvement of Chandler. Towards 1765 Leonhard Euler had predicted this displacement of the pole but with one period of 305 days. Its theory was based on the idea of a perfectly rigid body whereas the Ground is slightly elastic. Newcomb considers this rigidity as being slightly higher than that of steel and thus manages to reconcile the conflict between the observations and the theory.

Newcomb is a Autodidacte and Polymathe. He writes on the economy and its Principles off political economy (1885) is described by John Maynard Keynes like “one of this work, that an original scientific spirit which was not perverted by too many academic readings, can produce in a field still with half formed like the economy. ”. Newcomb speaks French, German, Italian and Swedish. It is also a active mountaineer, reads much and writes several books of scientific popularization as well as a book of Science-fiction: His wisdom the defender (1900).

Newcomb dies in Washington of a cancer of the bladder and is buried with the honors in the national Cimetière of Arlington, the president William Howard Taft attends its burial.

It is often known as that Newcomb would have declared that it is impossible for heavier than the air to fly whereas it more specifically criticized work of Samuel Pierpont Langley which thinks than a plane can be motorized by a Steam engine. Newcomb considers that if heaviest that the air can fly, the power developed by a steam engine compared to its weight makes more its use than problematic. “It is probable that the twentieth century is intended to see the natural forces which will enable us to fly from continent to continent with a speed largely exceeding that of the birds. But when one wonders whether the air flight is possible in the state of our knowledge with the materials which we know, a steel combination, fabrics and of vapor, the answer is completely different. ”

Honors

Publications

  • Note one the Frequency off Uses off the Different Digits in Natural Numbers , 1881
  • Popular astronomy , 1878
  • Astronomy for schools and colleges , 1880
  • Elements off astronomy , 1890
  • His wisdom the defender - science fiction, 1900
  • The stars , 1901
  • Astronomy for everyone , 1903
  • The Reminiscences off year Astronomer - its autobiography, 1903
  • Compendium off Spherical Astronomy , 1906,

See too

References

See Simon Newcomb, America' S Unofficial Astronomer Royal by Bill Casing and Merri Sweats Casing, Mantanzas Publishing, St Augustine, Fl 2006, for more information on the life and work of Simon Newcomb.

External bonds

  • Biography of the '' Dictionary off Canadian Biography Online ''
  • biography of the university of St Andrews
  • Bruce medal 1898
  • Simon Newcomb: '' Side-Lights One Astronomy '' on the Project Gutenberg
  • Bibliography of the writings of Newcomb in economy

December 13rd 1877 -->

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