RARE! "Autodidactic Polymath" Simon Newcomb Hand Written Note COA

Description: Up for auction a RARE! "Autodidactic Polymath" Simon Newcomb Hand Written Note . This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity. ES-2578 Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadian–American astronomer, applied mathematician and autodidactic polymath, who was Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins University. Though he had little conventional schooling, he made important contributions to timekeeping as well as other fields in applied mathematics such as economics and statistics in addition to writing a science fiction novel. Simon Newcomb was born in the town of Wallace, Nova Scotia. His parents were Emily Prince, the daughter of a New Brunswick magistrate, and itinerant school teacher John Burton Newcomb. John moved around teaching in different parts of Canada, particularly in different villages in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Emily was a daughter of Thomas Prince and Miriam Steeves, making Simon a great-great-grandson of Heinrich Stief, and a not-too-distant cousin of William Henry Steeves, a Canadian Father of Confederation. Newcomb seems to have had little conventional schooling other than from his father and from a short apprenticeship to Dr. Foshay, a charlatan herbalist, in New Brunswick in 1851. Nevertheless, his father provided him with an excellent foundation for his future studies. Newcomb's apprenticeship with Dr. Foshay occurred when he was 16-years-old. 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 and disillusioned with his apprenticeship and about Foshay's unscientific approach, realizing that the man was a charlatan. He made the decision to walk out on Foshay and break their agreement. He walked the 120 miles (190 km) to the port of Calais in Maine where he met the captain of a ship who agreed to take him to Salem, Massachusetts so that he could join his father. In about 1854, he joined his father in Salem (John Newcomb had moved earlier to the United States), and the two journeyed together to Maryland. After arriving in Maryland, Newcomb taught for two years from 1854 to 1856; for the first year in a country school in Massey's Cross Roads, Kent County, Maryland, then for a year at a school not far south in Sudlersville in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. In his spare time he studied a variety of subjects such as political economy and religion, but his deepest studies were made in mathematics and astronomy. In particular he read Newton's Principia at this time. In 1856 he took up a position as a private tutor close to Washington and he often travelled to that city to study mathematics in the libraries there. He was able to borrow a copy of Bowditch's translation of Laplace's Traité de mécanique céleste from the library of the Smithsonian Institution but found the mathematics beyond him. Newcomb studied mathematics and physics privately and supported himself by teaching before becoming a human computer (a functionary in charge of calculations) at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1857. At around the same time, he enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, graduating BSc in 1858. Newcomb studied mathematics under Benjamin Peirce and the impecunious Newcomb was often a welcome guest at the Peirce home. However, he later was said to develop a dislike of Peirce's son, Charles Sanders Peirce and has been accused of a "successful destruction" of C. S. Peirce's career.[5] In particular, Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins University, is alleged to have been on the point of awarding tenure to C. S. Peirce, before Newcomb intervened behind the scenes to dissuade him. About 20 years later, Newcomb allegedly influenced the Carnegie Institution Trustees, to prevent C. S. Peirce's last chance to publish his life's work, through a denial of a Carnegie grant to Peirce, even though Andrew Carnegie himself, Theodore Roosevelt, William James and others, wrote to support it. 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. View more great items

Price: 699.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2024-10-07T23:21:50.000Z

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