AT A MEETING OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, HELD DECEMBER 4, 1909.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS OF MR. CHARLES K. WEAD,

PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.

We are met to commemorate the life and services of our late President, Simon Newcomb.

One of the by-laws of the Philosophical Society prescribes that the meeting preceding the annual meeting in December "shall be set apart for the President's Annual Address." It is, therefore, peculiarly fitting that President Newcomb's friends meet tonight as they would do if he were alive and well; and while we may not hear his voice, through the lips of others we shall be taught some of his knowledge and wisdom, and catch some inspiration from the story of his lifelong devotion to lofty and difficult tasks. So we may feel tonight that he, like the martyr of old, "being dead, yet speaketh."

Professor Newcomb was one of the founders of this Society in 1871, and Joseph Henry was its only President till his death in 1878. At the next election Simon Newcomb was chosen to fill the vacancy, and held the office for two years: since then a single term has been the invariable custom. During his terms the Society became so large that the An

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thropological and Biological Societies were formed out of it. During 1907-8 Mr. Newcomb was prominently before the Society and presented several interesting communications, and a year ago was, for the third time, elected President.

The addresses this evening cannot, of course, be expected to present a chronological, complete or well-balanced biography; for the activities of his long and busy life have been too great for a single evening's presentation. Bibliographically these activities are represented by about a dozen independent volumes, more than half a hundred scientific memoirs and papers referred to in the Royal Society's Catalogue, and hundreds of magazine and newspaper reviews and articles, signed and unsigned, all duly listed by an admiring cataloguer. Tonight we may expect to hear of only a few of these activities, but of these few, somewhat in detail, and as seen from diverse view-points.

Running through all the important expressions of his life, I think we may see, more than in most men's, evidences of a profound belief in law; it appears in his orderly life, free from the proverbial eccentricities of genius, as well as in his monumental works based on the laws of gravitation; it underlies his work on the principles of political economy, his attempts to find the facts and laws of psychical phenomena, and to apply the laws of probability to stories of apparitions and coincidences.

To keep the facts presented this evening in right relations of time, it will be convenient to bear in mind a very few dates:

Born at Wallace, Nova Scotia, March 12, 1835.

Graduated, B. S., from Lawrence Scientific School in 1858. Became a member of the American Association in 1859. Appointed Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy, 1861.

Married, 1863.

Elected Associate member of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1872, and since then elected to about forty societies in twelve foreign countries.

Invited to become Director of Harvard Observatory, 1875.

Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, 1877 to 1897. Lectured on Political Economy at Harvard, 1879 and 1880. Professor of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, and editor of the American Journal of Mathematics for many years from 1884.

President of the Society for Psychical Research from 1885. Retired with the rank of Rear Admiral, 1897.

As many of this audience were out of town during the summer, it is proper to add that Professor Newcomb died at Washington, D. C., July 11, 1909, after many months of severe suffering. Official honors were paid at his funeral, which was attended by the President and high officials of the Government; representatives of two of the foreign countries that had honored him in life were among the honorary pallbearers; he was buried with the ceremony prescribed for a Rear Admiral, the body being escorted to Arlington by several companies of marines and their band.

Tonight other foreign representatives honor the Society and its late President by their presence. One of them, a fellow-member in several learned societies and the Ambassador from the land of his birth, will now speak of his friend.

ADDRESS OF RT. HON. JAMES BRYCE, O. M.,

AMBASSADOR FROM GREAT BRITAIN.

Although there are many here present who knew Professor Newcomb more intimately than I did, and who are far more competent to speak of his scientific genius and the work he did for science, there is no one who admired that genius more warmly, or who comes more willingly to pay a tribute both to his splendid gifts and to the elevation of his character. Nor is it unfitting that such a tribute should come from one who is privileged to represent in this country both Nova Scotia, which gave birth to the illustrious man we commemorate and where he was known and honored, and Great Britain, to many of whose scientific societies he belonged as an honorary member.