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, Baltimore, and he had much to to do, in an advisory capacity,
with the equipment of the Lick Observatory and with testing and mounting
its great telescope, at that time the largest in the world.

To enumerate his degrees, scientific honors, and medals would tire the
reader. Among them were the degree of LL.D. from all the foremost
universities, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London
in 1874, the great gold Huygens medal of the University of Leyden, awarded
only once in twenty years, in 1878, and the Schubert gold medal of the
Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The collection of portraits of famous
astronomers at the Observatory of Pulkowa contains his picture, painted by