Simon Newcomb

Simon Newcomb was a Nova Scotian carpenter’s son who taught himself mathematics, joined the Naval Observatory in Washington, and became the leading American astronomer of the nineteenth century, computing the tables of the motions of the sun, moon and planets that navigators and astronomers used for most of the twentieth. The Extent of the Universe, the essay the Harvard Classics print, is his account for the general reader of how far the stars are and how the question of whether they end can be asked. He also wrote on economics and a novel, and argued that heavier-than-air flight was impractical shortly before the Wright brothers flew.