Simon Newcomb was mostly a self taught man.  Yet, he made important advances with respect to timekeeping, applied mathematics, economics and statistics.  This self made Canadian-American also dabbled in writing and astronomy.  It is this last area, astronomy, that we will focus on today.

Simon Newcomb lived from March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909.  In those days, unconventional learning was still something of a commonality.  This is perhaps why there was less of consensus mentality and more of a pioneering spirit.  All the same, he did hold professorships in Mathematics in the US Navy and at John Hopkins.

It is interesting to me that given the way he came up in the world exploring so much with his mind that he often made pronouncements of finality.  For example, in 1888, he wrote,

“We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”

He recovered from that belief enough to provide this writing on astronomy at a much later date:

http://www.bartleby.com/30/18.html

A brief introduction to Simon Newcomb is found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJDliwNi9U8&t=78s