Mt. Newcomb Mt. Chamberlin Discovery Pinnacle Mt. Whitney Sun, Aug 12, 2007 With: Michael Graupe		Etymology Mt. Newcomb Mt. Chamberlin Discovery Pinnacle Mt. Whitney	Story	Photos / Slideshow	Maps: 1 2	Profile
		Discovery Pinnacle previously climbed Sun, Aug 12, 2001 Mt. Whitney previously climbed Sat, Aug 24, 2002

The name was proposed by the Sierra Club. (SC papers in BL.) It first appeared on the Mt. Whitney 30' map in 1937."
- Peter Browning, Place Names of the Sierra Nevada

Newcomb Quote:

"Ten decimal places of are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to a fraction of an inch, and thirty decimal places would give the circumference of the visible universe to a quantity imperceptible to the most powerful microscope.

Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections (Dublin 1993)"
- Turnbull WWW Server

"Newcomb was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia, and was apprenticed to a quack doctor at the age of 16. Apart from the two or three years he spent as an apprentice, Newcomb received little or no formal education. At 16 he ran away to Maryland in the US, where he became a country schoolmaster.

Deciding that he wanted to work with mathematics, he enrolled and received his degree from the Lawrence science school of Harvard University in 1858.

In 1861, Newcomb worked at the Naval Observatory at Washington, DC, and in the 16 years he was there he worked at determining the position of celestial bodies.

When, in 1877 he was put in charge of the American Nautical Almanac office, he began calculating the motions of the bodies in the solar system. This work was to prove outstandingly accurate, and was used as a daily reference around the world for over 50 years.

Newcomb's greatest contribution was to establish with Arthur Matthew Weld Downing, a universal standard system of astronomical constants. This system, which was mostly Newcomb's is still in practical use today, as are his tables of data concerning various celestial bodies."
- Canada's Digital Collections

"How to find a wife, by Simon Newcomb

My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men. His method of seeking a wife was so far unique that it may not be devoid of interest, even at this date. From a careful study he had learned that the age at which a man should marry was twenty-five. A healthy and well-endowed offspring should be one of the main objects in view in entering the marriage state, and this requires a mentally gifted wife. She must be of different temperament from his own and an economical housekeeper. So when he found the age of twenty-five approaching, he began to look about. There was no one in Wallace who satisfied the requirements. He therefore set out afoot to discover his ideal. In those days and regions the professional tramp and mendicant were unknown, and every farmhouse dispensed its hospitality with an Arcadian simplicity little known in our times. Wherever he stopped overnight he made a critical investigation of the housekeeping, perhaps rising before the family for this purpose. He searched in vain until his road carried him out of the province. One young woman spoiled any chance she might have had by lack of economy in the making of bread. She was asked what she did with the unnecessarily large remnant of dough which she left sticking to the sides of the pan. She replied that she fed it to the horses. She received no further consideration.

The search had extended nearly a hundred miles when, early one evening, he reached what was then the small village of Moncton. He was attracted by the strains of music from a church, went into it, and found a religious meeting in progress. His eye was at once arrested by the face and head of a young woman playing on a melodeon, who was leading the singing. He sat in such a position that he could carefully scan her face and movements. As he continued this study the conviction grew upon him that here was the object of his search. That such should have occurred before there was any opportunity to inspect the dough-pan may lead the reader to conclusions of his own. He inquired her name -- Emily Prince. He cultivated her acquaintance, paid his addresses, and was accepted. He was fond of astronomy, and during the months of his engagement one of his favourite occupations was to take her out of an evening and show her the constellations. It is even said that, among the daydreams in which they indulged, one was that their firstborn might be an astronomer.

From Reminiscences of an Astronomer, by Simon Newcomb (1903)"
- School of Mathematical Science (UK)

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