Simon NewcombSimon Newcomb was a Canadian-American astronomer, applied mathematician, and self-taught polymath who died on July 11, 1909. He was a mathematics professor in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins University. Born in Nova Scotia, Newcomb left a apprenticeship at the age of 19 to join his father in Massachusetts, where the latter was teaching. Despite having minimal formal education, Newcomb earned a BSc from Harvard in 1858. Later in his career, he made significant contributions to timekeeping as well as other domains of applied mathematics such as economics and statistics. He was fluent in numerous languages and wrote and published a number of popular science publications as well as a science fiction novel. Simon Newcomb was born in the Nova Scotia hamlet of Wallace. John Burton Newcomb and Emily Prince were his parents. His father was an itinerant school teacher who moved regularly to teach in various parts of Canada, mainly Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Simon Newcomb was a distant relative of William Henry Steeves, a Canadian Father of Confederation, through his mother. Heinrich Stief, who arrived from Germany and settled in New Brunswick around 1760, was their immigrant ancestor in that line. Read More Read Less