The Reminiscences Of An Astronomer

Boston And New York: Houghton, Mifflin And Company, 1903. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Near Fine/No Jacket. Frontispiece. X, 424 Pp. Blue Cloth, Gilt. Detailed Autobiography With Succinct Explanations Of His Own Work And That Of Others He Worked With. This Example Inscribed To R C Archibald, Who Wrote The Official Biography And Bibliography Of Newcomb Published In The Memoirs Of The National Academy Of Sciences In 1924, And Also With The 1956 Signature Of A Prominent Jpl Astronomer Who Managed The U.S. Halley Watch Group. This Example Very Good +/ Near Fine, Light Wear, Gilt Brilliant, Hinges Tight. Simon Newcomb (1835 -1909) Was A Canadian-American Astronomer, Applied Mathematician And Autodidactic Polymath. Newcomb Visited Paris, France In 1870, Already Aware That The Table Of Lunar Positions Calculated By Peter Andreas Hansen Was In Error. While In Paris, He Realized That, In Addition To The Data From 1750 To 1838 That Hansen Had Used, There Was Further Data Stretching As Far Back As 1672, And Newcomb Used The "New" Data To Revise Hansen's Tables. In 1878, Newcomb Started Planning For A New And Precise Measurement Of The Speed Of Light, Starting Development A Refinement Of The Method Of Léon Foucault. A Letter From Albert Abraham Michelson Began A Long Collaboration And Friendship. In 1880, Michelson Assisted At Newcomb's Initial Measurement, But Michelson Left To Start His Own Project. Miichelson Published His First Measurement In 1880, But Newcomb's Measurement Was Substantially Different, And, In 1883, Michelson Revised His Measurement To A Value Closer To Newcomb's. In 1881, Newcomb Discovered The Statistical Principle Now Known As Benford's Law, Formulating The Principle That, In Any List Of Numbers Taken From An Arbitrary Set Of Data, More Numbers Will Tend To Begin With "1" Than With Any Other Digit.I N 1891, Within Months Of Seth Carlo Chandler's Discovery Of The 14-Month Variation Of Latitude, Now Referred To As The Chandler Wobble, Newcomb Explained The Apparent Conflict Between The Observed Motion And Predicted Period Of The Wobble, As Due To Elasticiity; He Used The Variation Of Latitude Observations To Estimate The Elasticity Of Earth, Finding It To Be Slightly More Rigid Than Steel. He Wrote On Economics And His Principles Of Political Economy (1885) Was Described By John Maynard Keynes As "One Of Those Original Works Which A Fresh Scientific Mind, Not Perverted By Having Read Too Much Of The Orthodox Stuff, Is Able To Produce From Time To Time In A Half-Formed Subject Like Economics." He Was Credited By Irving Fisher With The First-Known Enunciation Of The Equation Of Exchange Between Money And Goods Used In The Quantity Theory Of Money. His Reputation Suffers From His Personal Hostility To C. S. Pierce, Son Of Newcomb's First Great Mathematics Instructor, And Also From Newcomb's Disbelief In The Possibility Of Manned Flight.