erted himself with all his remaining energy to complete his
monumental work on the motion of the moon, and succeeded in bringing it to
an end before the final summons came. His last days thus had in them a
cast of the heroic, not less than if, as the commander of a torpedoed
battleship, he had gone down with her, or than if he had fallen charging
at the head of a forlorn hope. It is pleasant to think that such a man was
laid to rest with military honors. The accident that he was a retired
professor in the United States Navy may have been the immediate cause of
this, but its appropriateness lies deeper.

Newcomb saw the light not under the Stars and Stripes, but in Nova Scotia,
where he was born, at the town of Wallace on March 12, 1835. His father, a
teacher, was of American descent, his ancestors having settled in Canada
in 1761. After studying with his father and teaching for some little time
in his native province he came to the United States while yet a boy of
eighteen, and while teaching in Maryland in 1854-'56 was so fortunate as
to attract, by his mathematical ability, the attention of two eminent
American scientific men, Joseph Henry and Julius Hilgard, who secured him
an appointment as computer on the Nautical Almanac. The date of this was
1857, and Newcomb had thus, at his death, been in Government employ for
fifty-two years. As the work of the almanac was then carried on in
Cambridge, Mass., he was enabled to enter the Lawrence Scientific School
of Harvard University, where he graduated in 1858 and where he pursued
graduate studies for three years longer. On their completion in 1861 he
was appointed a professor of mathematics in the United States Navy, which
office he held till his death. This appointment, made when he was
twenty-six years old,--scarcely more than a boy,--is a striking testimony
to his remarkable ability as a mathematician, for of practical astronomy
he still knew little.

One of his first duties at Washington was to supervise the construction of
the great 26-inch equatorial just authorized by Congress and to plan for
mounting and housing it. In 1877 he became senior professor of mathematics
in the navy, and from that time until his retirement as a Rear Admiral in
1897 he had charge of the Nautical Almanac office, with its large corps of
naval and civilian assistants, in Washington and elsewhere. In 1884 he
also assumed the chair of mathematics and astronomy in Johns Hopkins
University, Balti