7.1 Gill, Donner, Newcomb
125
Newcomb was an authority in the field of determining the positions of stars
and fundamental constants in astronomy, such as the precession constant (the
speed at which the precession of the Earth’s pole relative to the stars proceeds)
and the Astronomical Unit (the average distance from the Earth to the Sun). In
addition, Newcomb was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
and author of many popular books on astronomy. My scientific biography of
Kapteyn has as subtitle Born Investigator of the Heavens, a quote about Kapteyn
taken from one of those books by Newcomb. Soon after Kapteyn’s work on
the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung had begun, Newcomb had heard of
Kapteyn; when the opportunity arose, he visited the Kapteyns in 1899 in Vries
and Groningen. Here too it is instructive to quote a paragraph from Henriette
Hertzsprung–Kapteyn’s biography [1] (for a picture of Kapteyn at the time see
Fig. 7.3):
Simon Newcomb came to Groningen and turned out to be a unexpectedly
stiff man, who impressed people by his appearance and by being mostly silent.
Kapteyn did not feel very comfortable with him and sometimes got annoyed by
it during his visit, no matter how much he appreciated his presence and how
instructive and interesting it was for him. Not so Mrs. Kapteyn. She had an easy,
natural way of dealing with important people, which was enjoyable and magnificent and at the same time great. She did not allow herself to be impressed by
anyone, because she never worried about the impression that she made, but was
very careful to make things pleasant and enjoyable for her guests. She immediately liked him; his silence did not bother her, because she had enough to say for
herself and mastered the English language very well. ‘He is a king among men’,
she used to say, and in amazement the children saw that he was allowed to stretch
out and put his tired, dusty feet on the beautiful golden chairs that were the
sanctuary in their mothers’ lounge. She baked buckwheat cakes for his breakfast,
because he loved that so much, and was the nicest hostess an stern American
could think of. The amazement was ours. At that time Newcomb wrote to Gill:
‘I have read a letter of you to Mrs. Kapteyn’, and apologized by saying; ‘It is hard
to keep anything from so delightful a woman’. Gill copied this remark back to
the Kapteyns, who were enormously pleased with it. Newcomb had a peculiar
dry humor, which the children were surprised to find in such an impressive man.
He was big and sizable, with heavily wavy white hair, which was eye-catchingly
beautiful. He said his hair was his wife’s pride. ‘Later my name will be mentioned
in the lexicons as ‘The man who had the most beautiful head of hair. Seems to
have been an astronomer’.
125
Newcomb was an authority in the field of determining the positions of stars
and fundamental constants in astronomy, such as the precession constant (the
speed at which the precession of the Earth’s pole relative to the stars proceeds)
and the Astronomical Unit (the average distance from the Earth to the Sun). In
addition, Newcomb was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
and author of many popular books on astronomy. My scientific biography of
Kapteyn has as subtitle Born Investigator of the Heavens, a quote about Kapteyn
taken from one of those books by Newcomb. Soon after Kapteyn’s work on
the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung had begun, Newcomb had heard of
Kapteyn; when the opportunity arose, he visited the Kapteyns in 1899 in Vries
and Groningen. Here too it is instructive to quote a paragraph from Henriette
Hertzsprung–Kapteyn’s biography [1] (for a picture of Kapteyn at the time see
Fig. 7.3):
Simon Newcomb came to Groningen and turned out to be a unexpectedly
stiff man, who impressed people by his appearance and by being mostly silent.
Kapteyn did not feel very comfortable with him and sometimes got annoyed by
it during his visit, no matter how much he appreciated his presence and how
instructive and interesting it was for him. Not so Mrs. Kapteyn. She had an easy,
natural way of dealing with important people, which was enjoyable and magnificent and at the same time great. She did not allow herself to be impressed by
anyone, because she never worried about the impression that she made, but was
very careful to make things pleasant and enjoyable for her guests. She immediately liked him; his silence did not bother her, because she had enough to say for
herself and mastered the English language very well. ‘He is a king among men’,
she used to say, and in amazement the children saw that he was allowed to stretch
out and put his tired, dusty feet on the beautiful golden chairs that were the
sanctuary in their mothers’ lounge. She baked buckwheat cakes for his breakfast,
because he loved that so much, and was the nicest hostess an stern American
could think of. The amazement was ours. At that time Newcomb wrote to Gill:
‘I have read a letter of you to Mrs. Kapteyn’, and apologized by saying; ‘It is hard
to keep anything from so delightful a woman’. Gill copied this remark back to
the Kapteyns, who were enormously pleased with it. Newcomb had a peculiar
dry humor, which the children were surprised to find in such an impressive man.
He was big and sizable, with heavily wavy white hair, which was eye-catchingly
beautiful. He said his hair was his wife’s pride. ‘Later my name will be mentioned
in the lexicons as ‘The man who had the most beautiful head of hair. Seems to
have been an astronomer’.