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22 Nov 2009

Simon Newcomb (1835-1909)


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Simon Newcomb (1835-1909) was a Canadian astronomer and mathematician. He was never formally educated as a child but later studied at Harvard University and went on to work for the United States Naval Observatory where he became involved in theories of planetary motion and measuring the position of the planets as an aid to navigation. In 1877, he became the director of the Nautical Almanac Office where he worked on a project that required recalculating all the astronomical constants - a year later he was working on a preceise recalculation of the speed of light. Newcomb is well-known for discovering the statistical principle called Benford's Law which states that in any list of numbers taken from an arbitrary set of data, more numbers will tend to have the leading digit '1' than any other leading digit. In 1891, Newcomb was able to estimate the elasticity of the Earth based on variations in latitude, and found it to be slightly more rigid than steel.

 
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