Simon Newcomb

Simon Newcomb was a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician born in Wallace, Nova Scotia, on March 12, 1835. Although he went through a traditional education process, he made important studies especially on time measurement. He also wrote articles on economics and statistics, and also wrote works in the science fiction genre.

Newcomb's father, John Burton Newcomb, spent his childhood in different places as he taught in various parts of Canada and lived a traveling life. He had a curious nature even at a young age; When he was sixteen years old, he did an internship on herbal treatment methods with Dr. He became increasingly uncomfortable with Foshay's unscientific approaches and made his first major life decision by breaking the agreement.

After walking to the port of Calais in Maine, he took a ship to Massachusetts and went to Maryland to join his father. During the years he spent here, he became interested in mathematics and astronomy and studied Newton's "Principia" intensively.

Newcomb, who started working at the Naval Yearbook Office in Massachusetts in 1857 and gave private mathematics and physics lessons, also enrolled in Harvard University's Lawrence Science School and graduated in 1858. He started working at the United States Naval Observatory during the US Civil War and worked on precisely measuring the positions of the planets.

During a visit to Paris in 1870, he noticed the erroneous calculations of the Danish astronomer Peter Andreas Hansen regarding the positions of the Moon and made important corrections in this field.

In addition to his calculations in the field of astronomy, Newcomb developed new methods in 1878 to make more precise measurements of the speed of light. In 1881, he put forward the principle known today as "Benford's law" with a statistical observation. Newcomb, who pursued mathematical precision throughout his life, attracted attention with his science fiction works as well as his scientific studies and passed away on June 11, 1909.