Simon Newcomb, America's First Great Astronomer

In 1854, at age 19, Simon Newcomb stood outside the gates of the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, longing to go inside to see the telescopes and perhaps even meet one of the astronomers. But he had no idea how he might be received he was not a US citizen and the only knowledge of astronomy that he could claim was what he had been able to glean on his own from a few aged books. He simply could not risk the humiliation of being turned away, he decided, and left without so much as making an inquiry. Seven years later, in the fall of 1861, Newcomb returned to the Naval Observatory to take up duties as a professor of mathematics. Canadian by birth, he still was not a US citizen, but his commission as a naval staff officer was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. And during the intervening years, Newcomb had spent countless hours studying math and astronomy on his own worked as a computer at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Universitys Lawrence Scientific School and made an arduous 4000-kilometer round trip from Cambridge to the wilds of central Canada as a member of an American scientific team organized to observe a total eclipse of the Sun.