The Reminiscences of an Astronomer

by Simon Newcomb

A pleasant incident occurred in 1884, when the office was honored by a visit from Professor John C. Adams of England, the man who, independently of Leverrier, had computed the place of Neptune, but failed to receive the lion's share of the honor because it happened to be the computations of the Frenchman and not his which led immediately to the discovery of the planet. It was of the greatest interest to me to bring two such congenial spirits as Adams and Hill together.

It would be difficult to find a more impressive example than that afforded by Hill's career, of the difficulty of getting the public to form and act upon sane judgments in such cases as his. The world has the highest admiration for astronomical research, and in this sentiment our countrymen are foremost. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote it. They pay good salaries to professors who chance to get a certain official position where they may do good work. And here was perhaps the greatest living master in the highest and most difficult field of astronomy, winning world-wide recognition for his country in the science, and receiving the salary of a department clerk. I never wrestled harder with a superior than I did with Hon. R. W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, about 1880, to induce him to raise Mr. Hill's salary from $1200 to $1400. It goes without saying that Hill took even less interest in the matter than I did. He did not work for pay, but for the love of science. His little farm at Nyack Turnpike sufficed for his home, and supplied his necessities so long as he lived there, and all he asked in Washington was the means of going on with his work. The deplorable feature of the situation is, that this devotion to his science, instead of commanding due recognition on the public and official side, rather tended to create an inadequate impression of the importance of what he was doing. That I could not secure for him at least the highest official consideration is among the regretful memories of my official life.

Although, so far as the amount of labor is concerned, Mr. Hill's work upon Jupiter and Saturn is the most massive he ever undertook, his really great scientific merit consists in the development of a radically new method of computing the inequalities of the moon's motion, which is now being developed and applied by Professor E. W. Brown. His most marked intellectual characteristic is the eminently practical character of his researches. He does not aim so much at elegant mathematical formulæ, as to determine with the greatest precision the actual quantities of which mathematical astronomy stands in need. In this direction he has left every investigator of recent or present time far in the rear.

After the computations on Jupiter and Saturn were made, it was necessary to correct their orbits and make tables of their motions. This work I left entirely in Mr. Hill's hands, the only requirement being that the masses of the planets and other data which he adopted should be uniform with those I used in the rest of the work. His tables were practically completed in manuscript at the beginning of 1892. When they were through, doubtless feeling, as well he might, that he had done his whole duty to science and the government, Mr. Hill resigned his office and returned to his home. During the summer he paid a visit to Europe, and visiting the Cambridge University, was honored with the degree of Doctor of Laws, along with a distinguished company, headed by the Duke of Edinburgh. One of the pleasant things to recall was that, during the fifteen years of our connection, there was never the slightest dissension or friction between us.

I may add that the computations which he made on the theory of Jupiter and Saturn are all preserved complete and in perfect form at the Nautical Almanac Office, so that, in case any question should arise respecting them in future generations, the point can be cleared up by an inspection.

In 1874, three years before I left the observatory, I was informed by Dr. Henry Draper that he had a mechanical assistant who showed great fondness for and proficiency in some work in mathematical astronomy. I asked to see what he was doing, and received a collection of papers of a remarkable kind. They consisted mainly of some of the complicated developments of celestial mechanics. In returning them I wrote to Draper that, when I was ready to begin my work on the planetary theories, I must have his man,—could he possibly be spared? But he came to me before the time, while I was carrying on some investigations with aid afforded by the Smithsonian Institution. Of course, when I took charge of the Nautical Almanac Office, he was speedily given employment on its work. His name was John Meier, a Swiss by birth, evidently from the peasant class, but who had nevertheless been a pupil of Professor Rudolph Wolf at Zurich. Emigrating to this country, he was, during the civil war, an engineer's mate or something of that grade in the navy. He was the most perfect example of a mathematical machine that I ever had at command. Of original power,—the faculty of developing new methods and discovering new problems, he had not a particle. Happily for his peace of mind, he was totally devoid of worldly ambition. I had only to prepare the fundamental data for him, explain what was wanted, write down the matters he was to start with, and he ground out day after day the most complicated algebraic and trigonometrical computations with untiring diligence and almost unerring accuracy.

But a dark side of the picture showed itself very suddenly and unexpectedly in a few years. For the most selfish reasons, if for no others, I desired that his peace of mind should be undisturbed. The result was that I was from time to time appealed to as an arbitrator of family dissensions, in which it was impossible to say which side was right and which wrong. Then, as a prophylactic against malaria, his wife administered doses of whiskey. The rest of the history need not be told. It illustrates the maxim that "blood will tell," which I fear is as true in scientific work as in any other field of human activity.

A man of totally different blood, the best in fact, entered the office shortly before Meier broke down. This was Mr. Cleveland Keith, son of Professor Reuel Keith, who was one of the professors at the observatory when it was started. His patience and ability led to his gradually taking the place of a foreman in supervising the work pertaining to the reduction of the observations, and the construction of the tables of the planets. Without his help, I fear I should never have brought the tables to a conclusion. He died in 1896, just as the final results of the work were being put together.

High among the troublesome problems with which I had to deal while in charge of the Nautical Almanac, was that of universal time. All but the youngest of my readers will remember the period when every railway had its own meridian, by the time of which its trains were run, which had to be changed here and there in the case of the great trunk lines, and which seldom agreed with the local time of a place. In the Pennsylvania station at Pittsburg were three different times; one that of Philadelphia, one of some point farther west, and the third the local Pittsburg time. The traveler was constantly liable to miss a train, a connection, or an engagement by the doubt and confusion thus arising.

This was remedied in 1883 by the adoption of our present system of standard times of four different meridians, the introduction of which was one of the great reforms of our generation. When this change was made, I was in favor of using Washington time as the standard, instead of going across the ocean to Greenwich for a meridian. But those who were pressing the measure wanted to have a system for the whole world, and for this purpose the meridian of Greenwich was the natural one. Practically our purpose was served as well by the Greenwich meridian as it would have been by that of Washington.