Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcombwas a Canadian-American astronomer, applied mathematician and autodidactic polymath, who was Professor of Mathematics in the U.S. Navy and at Johns Hopkins...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth12 March 1835
CountryCanada
engineering aviation human-life
All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint.
reading aunt years
I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.
thinking might revolution
So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.
psychology way fields
My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology.
beautiful science physics
One of the most beautiful hypotheses ever propounded in physics is ... the Dynamical Theory of Gases
way study mathematics
I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.
morning night two
The result was that, if it happened to clear off after a cloudy evening, I frequently arose from my bed at any hour of the night or morning and walked two miles to the observatory to make some observation included in the programme.
educational cutting men
If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.
war taken rude
The time was not yet ripe for the growth of mathematical science among us, and any development that might have taken place in that direction was rudely stopped by the civil war.
party swag details
The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.
teaching fifteen twenties
The beginning of 1856 found me teaching in the family of a planter named Bryan, residing in Prince George County, Md., some fifteen or twenty miles from Washington.
airplane space machines
Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
wall light world
I had not yet gotten into the world of light. But I felt as one who, standing outside, could knock against the wall and hear an answering knock from within.
party eclipse-of-the-sun visible
Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.