Schaefer replies: Bill Carter and Merri Sue Carter take issue not with my review, which was glowing, but with the opinion of most other historians that Simon Newcomb had a “cold” and “ruthless” personality.
With the Carters raising the issue, I should report why most historians use words like “intimidating,” “sanctimonious,” and “grim” to describe Newcomb. Many incidents contribute to that broad conclusion, including his use of disguised influence to deny tenure, grants, jobs, and publications to one of America’s greatest mathematicians; 1 the perceived attempt to steal the credit for Asaph Hall’s discovery of the Martian moons; 2 and long-running feuds with many of the leading astronomers in America. 3 As contrary evidence, the Carters’ letter offers only the generality that Newcomb visited and corresponded with leading scientists and won prestigious awards. Such evidence confirms only that Newcomb was the greatest astronomer of his day; it says nothing about his personality.
Regarding Professor Moriarty, many frivolous claims have been made over the last century of Sherlockian literature, but only Newcomb has a long list of identical and unique matches with the biography of Moriarty. Newcomb also has three documented personal connections with Arthur Conan Doyle at the time the author was inventing the arch-villain. But Newcomb has no connection with Moriarty’s criminal side. Doyle often used multiple sources for characters, and he explicitly told friends that the criminal side of Moriarty’s career was modeled after Adam Worth, 4 a London arch-villain famous at the time, and not after Jonathan Wild, a forgotten criminal from two centuries earlier. We all agree that Doyle did not model the criminal side of Moriarty after Newcomb.
