NEWCOMB, SIMON (1835-1909), born at Wallace, Nova Scotia; educated in his father's school and came to the United States in 1853. Began, in 1854, teaching in Maryland; was appointed computer on _Nautical Almanac_ at Cambridge in 1857; was graduated at Lawrence Scientific School in 1858; appointed Professor of Mathematics in the U. S. Navy in 1861. He supervised the construction of the 26-inch equatorial telescope at the Naval Observatory, and was secretary of the Transit of Venus Commission; was a member of nearly all of the Imperial and Royal societies of Europe and of the various societies in the United States, receiving the Copley Medal in 1874; the Huygens, 1878; the Royal Society, 1890, and the Bruce Medal in 1898; held the presidency of the following learned societies, viz: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1877; Society for Psychical Research, 1885-1886; American Mathematical Society, 1897-1898; the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America from its foundation in 1899. He rendered notable service in popularizing the doctrine of hyperspace. NORM--An authoritative standard; model or type; standard of reference. The choice of a norm for spatial determinations cannot abide in any premise except that which naturally, and not artificially and conventionally, conforms to what is actually perceived; if so, there should be justification for challenging the wisdom and utility of the present schematism of things. There is an inherent conformity of space with intellect and intellect with space, and because of this natural complementarity of part with part and whole with whole, space cannot be otherwise than the intellectuality normally conceives it to be, provided, of course, that the cognitive movement is free and untrammeled by arbitrary hindrances. Consciousness, therefore, is the norm or standard of reference for all questions arising out of a consideration of spatiality.