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7 unusual facts about Simon Newcomb


Arthur Matthew Weld Downing

He collaborated with his U.S. counterpart Simon Newcomb in establishing an international standard for astronomical constants.

Edward Baldwin Whitney

He married A. Josepha Newcomb, the daughter of astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb.

Otto Wilhelm von Struve

By the initiative of Struve, two US astronomers, Simon Newcomb and Asaph Hall were appointed as Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Pat Hayes

In the middle 1990s, while serving as president of AAAI, Hayes began a series of attacks on critics of AI, mostly phrased in an ironic light, and (together with his colleague Kenneth Ford) invented an award named after Simon Newcomb to be given for the most ridiculous argument "disproving" the possibility of AI.

Rømer's determination of the speed of light

It would be another thirty years before A. A. Michelson in the United States published his more precise results (299,910±50 km/s) and Simon Newcomb confirmed the agreement with astronomical measurements, almost exactly two centuries after Rømer's announcement.

Sudlersville, Maryland

Other famous residents include Astronomer and Mathematician Simon Newcomb.

Wallace, Nova Scotia

Wallace is the birthplace of Simon Newcomb, the astronomer and mathematician, and the hometown of figure skater John Mattatall as well as the retirement residence of 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics co-winner Willard Boyle co-inventor of the charge-coupled device or the CCD imaging chip at the heart of digital cameras, and Raymond Legend of the EASHL Hartford Whalers.


Ibn Yunus

Ibn Yunus's observations on conjunctions and eclipses were used in Richard Dunthorne and Simon Newcombs' respective calculations of the secular acceleration of the moon.

Lunar theory

and other notable mathematical astronomers also made significant contributions, including: Edmond Halley; Philippe Gustave le Doulcet, Comte de Pontécoulant; John Couch Adams; George William Hill; and Simon Newcomb.


see also