Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/543

Rh for the 26-inch equatorial telescope authorized by congress, supervised its construction, and planned the tower and dome in which it is mounted. In 1871 he was appointed secretary of the commission that was created by congress for the purposes of observ- ing the transit of Venus on 9 Dec, 1874, which organized the expeditions that were sent out by the U. S. government. He visited the Saskatchewan region in 1860 to observe an eclipse of the sun, and in 1870-'l was sent to Gibraltar for a similar pur- pose, and in 1882 he observed the transit of Venus at the Cape of Good Hope. Meanwhile in 1877 he became senior professor of mathematics in the U. S. navy, with the relative rank of captain, and since that time has been in charge of the office of the " American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac." A large corps of civilian assistants in Washington and elsewhere, as well as officers of the navy who are detailed to that office, work under his direction. In addition to these duties, in 1884 he became pro- fessor of mathematics and astronomy in Johns Hopkins, where he has charge of the graduate stu- dents in astronomy. Prof. Newcomb has been in- timately associated with the equipment of the Lick observatory of California, and examined the glass of the great telescope and its mounting before its acceptance by the trustees. The results of his sci- entific work have been given to the world in more than 100 papers and memoirs. Concerning these, Arthur Cayley, president of the Royal astronomical society of Great Britain, said : "Prof. Newcomb's writings exhibit, all of them, a combination, on the one hand, of math- ematical skill and power, and on the other of good hard work, devoted to the furtherance of astronomical sci- ence." His work has been princi- pally in the math- ematical astrono- my of the solar system, particu- larly Neptune, Uranus, and the moon, but the whole plan in- cludes the most exact possible tables of the motions of all the planets. Among the most important of his papers are " On the Secular Variations and Mutual Relations of the Orbits of the Asteroids " {I860) ; " An Investigation of the Orbit of Neptune, with General Tables of its Motion" (1867); "An Investigation of the Orbit of Uranus, with General Table of its Motion " (1874) ; " Researches on the Motion of the Moon " (1876) ; " Measure of the Ve- locity of Light " (1884) ; and " Development of the Perturbative Function and its Derivative in Sines and Cosines of the Eccentric Anomaly, and in Pow- ers of the Eccentricities and Inclinations" (1884). In 1874 Columbian university of Washington con- ferred on him the degree of LL. D., and in 187o he received a similar honor from Yale, also from Har- vard in 1884, and from Columbia in 1887, while on the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Uni- versity of Leyden, in 1875, that institution gave him the degree of master of mathematics and doc- tor of natural philosophy, and on the 500th anni- versary of the University of Heidelberg, in 1886, he received the degree of Ph. D. He was awarded the gold medal of the Royal astronomical society in, and in 1878 received the great gold Huygens medal of the University of Leyden, which is given to astronomers once in twenty years for the most important work accomplished in that science be- tween its awards. In 1887 the Russian govern- ment ordered the portrait of Prof. Newcomb to be painted for the collection of famous astronomers at the Russian observatory at Pulkowa. He was elected an associate of the Royal astronomical so- ciety in 1872, corresponding member of the Insti- tute of France in 1874, and foreign member of the Royal society in 1877, and he also holds honorary or corresponding relations to nearly all the Euro- pean academies of science. In 1887 he was elected one of the eight members of the council of the As- tronomische Gesellschaft, an international astro- nomical society that meets once in two years. He was elected to the National academy of sciences in 1869, and since 1883 has been its vice-president. In 1876 he was elected president of the American asso- ciation for the advancement of science, and he de- livered his retiring address at the St. Louis meeting in 1878. He has also held the presidency of the American society for psychical research. His liter- ary work includes contributions to many of the im- portant reviews. He is also editor of the " American Journal of Mathematics." His scientific books in- clude " Popular Astronomy " (New York, 1877), which has been republished in England and trans- lated into German ; " School Astronomy," with Ed- ward S. Holden (1879 ; " Briefer Course," 1883) ; also a series of text-books, comprising " Algebi'a " (1881) ; "Geometry" (1881); " Trigonometrv Logarithms" (1882); "School Algebra" (1882); "Analytic Geometry" (1884); " Essentials of Trigonometry" (1884); and "Calculus" (1887). Prof. Newcomb refers to astronomy as his profession and to politi- cal economy as his recreation. In the latter branch his books include " A Critical Examination of our Financial Policy during the Rebellion " (New York, 1865) ; " The A B C of Finance " (1877) ; " A Plain Man's Talk on the Labor Question " (1886) ; and " Principles of Political Economy " (1886).

NEWELL, Hugh, artist, b. near Belfast, Ire- land, 4 Oct., 1830. He began to study art at the age of nineteen, becoming a pupil in the South Kensington schools, London, and also working under Couture in Paris and in Antwerp. He came to this country, resided eight years in Pitts- burg, Pa., where he was for some time principal of the Women's school of design, was for four years principal of the Maryland institute in Balti- more, and then in 1879 became professor of draw- ing in Johns Hopkins university. In Baltimore he gained gold medals in 1853 and 1858, and a silver one in 1859. He has exhibited at the Royal academy, the Society of British artists, the National academy of design, and the American water-color society, of which he is a member. PI is works in- clude " Smithy " (1873) ; " Basket of Grapes " ; " In the Cottage ' Window " (1878) ; " The Country Musician " ; " The Binder, Wheat-Field in Harvest " (1879); "The Hillside"; "The Laborer" (1880); " In the Sugar Camp " ; " In the Barn " (1881) ; " Woods in Winter " ; " Husking Corn in the Field" (1882); "Grapes"; and " From the East and West " (1883).

'''NEWELL. McFadden Alexander''', educator, b. in Belfast, Ireland, 7 Sept., 1824; d. in Havre de Grace, Md., 14 Aug., 1893. He was educated at Belfast and at Trinity college, Dublin, and coming to this country in 1848 was professor of natural science in Baltimore city college, Md., in 1850-'4, and then field the same chair in Lafayette college. He became principal of the State normal