Thomas Jefferson Jackson See
Encyclopedia
Thomas Jefferson Jackson (T. J. J.) See, (February 19, 1866 – July 4, 1962) was an American astronomer
of high potential who ended a colorful life with no real accomplishment in astronomy or physics. He is renowned for a career dogged by plagiarism, being fired from two observatory staffs, grand egotistical claims, being 'exiled' to an isolated outpost, and his vitriolic attacks on relativity
.
, Missouri
. He attended the University of Missouri
, graduating in 1889 with an undergraduate career that was outwardly stellar. See achieved honors distinction in nearly every subject, became his class valedictorian, and was the recipient of the Laws Astronomical Medal for an original thesis on an astronomical subject. However, his speech "The Spirit of the Age" was a plagiarized version on an earlier speech given by another student, and his 'original thesis' for the Laws Astronomical Medal was claimed to be original work but was just from prior work by Sir George Darwin. See was also a critical player in the academic insurgency aimed at ousting university president Samuel Laws
(in favor of See's mentor William Benjamin Smith). This plagiarism and bitter in-fighting "set the scene for a career perhaps unrivalled as an example of wasted talent". Nevertheless, with the outwardly strong credentials, See went to the University of Berlin where he received a Ph.D. in mathematics
in 1892. With a European doctorate, See returned to America with enviable credentials and a career of great promise.
, where he worked as an instructor under George Ellery Hale
. See left Chicago in 1896 after failing to receive a promotion. He next worked at Lowell Observatory
until he was fired in 1898 for his arrogant attitude towards the staff. See's arrogance and overconfidence caused problems throughout his career, in both professional relationships and erroneous scientific results arising from carelessness. After his dismissal from Lowell, See joined the staff of the United States Naval Observatory
in 1898.
It was at the Naval Observatory that some of See's previous work, and his arrogance, led to his downfall. Several years earlier, in 1895, while studying the well known binary star
70 Ophiuchi
at the University of Chicago (and from a few observations made at the Leander McCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia
during a visit in April 1895), See believed he had found small anomalies in the motion of one of the stars suggesting a third object was present and its gravitational influence was affecting the motion of the star (Capt. W. S. Jacob had mentioned this possibility in an earlier study in 1855). See's results were published in the Astronomical Journal
. In 1899, Forest R. Moulton analyzed this proposed triple system and demonstrated convincingly that it would be unstable, and therefore very unlikely to actually exist (Moulton also pointed out that an orbit not requiring an unseen companion had been put forth by Eric Doolittle). See took great offense and wrote an abusive letter to the Astronomical Journal. An edited version was published and he was banned from future publication in the Astronomical Journal. See found himself increasingly at odds with other astronomers, and eventually suffered a breakdown in 1902. He spent one semester teaching at the United States Naval Academy
, but was then transferred to a naval shipyard at Mare Island
, California
in charge of the time station, until his retirement in 1930.
In 1910 he published a 700+ page work entitled Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systems, Vol. II, The Capture Theory of Cosmical Evolution. In this work he describes his task to "brush aside the erroneous doctrines heretofore current, as one would the accumulated dust and cobwebs of ages..". In 1913 William Larkin Webb published a Brief Biography and Popular Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of T. J. J. See. Webb was a newspaper publisher and amateur astronomer, and a long-time admirer of See, a fellow Missourian. The book, which many regarded to have been written by See himself, essentially destroyed any remaining credibility he had in the astronomical community. The Nation
published a review of the book poking fun at its extraordinary hyperbole, which included such material as: "The infant See, we are told, first saw the light on the 393rd anniversary of Copernicus's birth, ...[and] showed himself "every inch a natural philosopher" by speculating on the origins of the sun, moon and stars at the tender age of two, never so much as dreaming that he should grow into a little boy with "methodical methods", and one day become "the greatest astronomer in the world".
See is renown as the primary modern proponent of the idea that various ancient observers report the color of the bright star Sirius
to be red as a result of stellar evolution. The Red-Sirius controversy arises because modern observations show that Sirius is white in color, and the very strong realization from modern astronomers that a reddish color for Sirius in antiquity is essentially impossible by any mechanism of astrophysics. See published six papers from 1892 to 1926 on the topic, making shrill attacks on critics, and ignoring the substantial numbers of texts from antiquity that described Sirius as blue or white in color. See's obsession with what is now considered as a fringe area (whose solution involves only cultural allusions) only served to further distance the maverick from mainstream astronomy.
See spent the years at Mare Island pursuing fame as a discoverer of the laws of nature, issuing a series of publications on the origin of the solar system, the size of the Milky Way
and the cause of sunspots and earthquakes. He also wrote a series of articles about the Aether
, which eventually totalled nearly 300 pages, and served as the framework for his theory of everything
, in which all forces were transmitted as aetheric waves.
He also engaged in vitriolic attacks against Einstein and his theory of relativity
, which Einstein essentially ignored. The scientific community also ignored See's criticisms of relativity.
See's numerous papers are in the collection of the Library of Congress
.
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
of high potential who ended a colorful life with no real accomplishment in astronomy or physics. He is renowned for a career dogged by plagiarism, being fired from two observatory staffs, grand egotistical claims, being 'exiled' to an isolated outpost, and his vitriolic attacks on relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
.
Early life
See was born near Montgomery CityMontgomery City, Missouri
Montgomery City is a city in Montgomery County, Missouri, United States. The population was 2,442 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Montgomery County.-Geography:Montgomery City is located at...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
. He attended the University of Missouri
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
, graduating in 1889 with an undergraduate career that was outwardly stellar. See achieved honors distinction in nearly every subject, became his class valedictorian, and was the recipient of the Laws Astronomical Medal for an original thesis on an astronomical subject. However, his speech "The Spirit of the Age" was a plagiarized version on an earlier speech given by another student, and his 'original thesis' for the Laws Astronomical Medal was claimed to be original work but was just from prior work by Sir George Darwin. See was also a critical player in the academic insurgency aimed at ousting university president Samuel Laws
Samuel Laws
The Rev. Dr. Samuel Spahr Laws was an American minister, professor, physician, college president, businessman and inventor best known today as the inventor of the Laws Gold Indicator, a predecessor of the ticker tape machine....
(in favor of See's mentor William Benjamin Smith). This plagiarism and bitter in-fighting "set the scene for a career perhaps unrivalled as an example of wasted talent". Nevertheless, with the outwardly strong credentials, See went to the University of Berlin where he received a Ph.D. in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
in 1892. With a European doctorate, See returned to America with enviable credentials and a career of great promise.
Scientific work
See specialized in the study of binary stars, particularly in determining their orbits. See initially found work at the University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he worked as an instructor under George Ellery Hale
George Ellery Hale
George Ellery Hale was an American solar astronomer.-Biography:Hale was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was educated at MIT, at the Observatory of Harvard College, , and at Berlin . As an undergraduate at MIT, he is known for inventing the spectroheliograph, with which he made his discovery of...
. See left Chicago in 1896 after failing to receive a promotion. He next worked at Lowell Observatory
Lowell Observatory
Lowell Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell Observatory was established in 1894, placing it among the oldest observatories in the United States, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965....
until he was fired in 1898 for his arrogant attitude towards the staff. See's arrogance and overconfidence caused problems throughout his career, in both professional relationships and erroneous scientific results arising from carelessness. After his dismissal from Lowell, See joined the staff of the United States Naval Observatory
United States Naval Observatory
The United States Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the United States, with a primary mission to produce Positioning, Navigation, and Timing for the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Defense...
in 1898.
It was at the Naval Observatory that some of See's previous work, and his arrogance, led to his downfall. Several years earlier, in 1895, while studying the well known binary star
Binary star
A binary star is a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common center of mass. The brighter star is called the primary and the other is its companion star, comes, or secondary...
70 Ophiuchi
70 Ophiuchi
70 Ophiuchi a binary star system located 16.6 light years away from the Earth. It is in the constellation Ophiuchus. At magnitude 4 it is a typical less bright star usually visible to the unaided eye away from city lights.-Binary star:...
at the University of Chicago (and from a few observations made at the Leander McCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
during a visit in April 1895), See believed he had found small anomalies in the motion of one of the stars suggesting a third object was present and its gravitational influence was affecting the motion of the star (Capt. W. S. Jacob had mentioned this possibility in an earlier study in 1855). See's results were published in the Astronomical Journal
Astronomical Journal
The Astronomical Journal is a peer-reviewed monthly scientific journal owned by the American Astronomical Society and currently published by Institute of Physics Publishing. It is one of the premier journals for astronomy in the world...
. In 1899, Forest R. Moulton analyzed this proposed triple system and demonstrated convincingly that it would be unstable, and therefore very unlikely to actually exist (Moulton also pointed out that an orbit not requiring an unseen companion had been put forth by Eric Doolittle). See took great offense and wrote an abusive letter to the Astronomical Journal. An edited version was published and he was banned from future publication in the Astronomical Journal. See found himself increasingly at odds with other astronomers, and eventually suffered a breakdown in 1902. He spent one semester teaching at the United States Naval Academy
United States Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located in Annapolis, Maryland, United States...
, but was then transferred to a naval shipyard at Mare Island
Mare Island
Mare Island is a peninsula in the United States alongside the city of Vallejo, California, about northeast of San Francisco. The Napa River forms its eastern side as it enters the Carquinez Strait juncture with the east side of San Pablo Bay. Mare Island is considered a peninsula because no full...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in charge of the time station, until his retirement in 1930.
In 1910 he published a 700+ page work entitled Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systems, Vol. II, The Capture Theory of Cosmical Evolution. In this work he describes his task to "brush aside the erroneous doctrines heretofore current, as one would the accumulated dust and cobwebs of ages..". In 1913 William Larkin Webb published a Brief Biography and Popular Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of T. J. J. See. Webb was a newspaper publisher and amateur astronomer, and a long-time admirer of See, a fellow Missourian. The book, which many regarded to have been written by See himself, essentially destroyed any remaining credibility he had in the astronomical community. The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
published a review of the book poking fun at its extraordinary hyperbole, which included such material as: "The infant See, we are told, first saw the light on the 393rd anniversary of Copernicus's birth, ...[and] showed himself "every inch a natural philosopher" by speculating on the origins of the sun, moon and stars at the tender age of two, never so much as dreaming that he should grow into a little boy with "methodical methods", and one day become "the greatest astronomer in the world".
See is renown as the primary modern proponent of the idea that various ancient observers report the color of the bright star Sirius
Sirius
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek: Seirios . The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris...
to be red as a result of stellar evolution. The Red-Sirius controversy arises because modern observations show that Sirius is white in color, and the very strong realization from modern astronomers that a reddish color for Sirius in antiquity is essentially impossible by any mechanism of astrophysics. See published six papers from 1892 to 1926 on the topic, making shrill attacks on critics, and ignoring the substantial numbers of texts from antiquity that described Sirius as blue or white in color. See's obsession with what is now considered as a fringe area (whose solution involves only cultural allusions) only served to further distance the maverick from mainstream astronomy.
See spent the years at Mare Island pursuing fame as a discoverer of the laws of nature, issuing a series of publications on the origin of the solar system, the size of the Milky Way
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...
and the cause of sunspots and earthquakes. He also wrote a series of articles about the Aether
Aether
-Metaphysics and mythology:* Aether , the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere* Aether was the personification of the "upper sky", space and heaven, in Greek mythology-Science and engineering:...
, which eventually totalled nearly 300 pages, and served as the framework for his theory of everything
Theory of everything
A theory of everything is a putative theory of theoretical physics that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena, and predicts the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out in principle....
, in which all forces were transmitted as aetheric waves.
He also engaged in vitriolic attacks against Einstein and his theory of relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
, which Einstein essentially ignored. The scientific community also ignored See's criticisms of relativity.
See's numerous papers are in the collection of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
.
Selected writings
- See, T. J. J. 1910, "Researches on the evolution of the stellar systems: v. 2. The capture theory of cosmical evolution, founded on dynamical principles and illustrated by phenomena observed in the spiral nebulae, the planetary system, the double and multiple stars and clusters and the star-clouds of the Milky Way." T.P. Nichols (Lynn, Mass.)
- See, T. J. J. 1920, Astronomische Nachrichten, 211, 49: "New Theory of the Aether"
Further reading
- Webb, William Larkin, 1913 "Brief Biography and Popular Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of T. J. J. See" T.P. Nichols & Son (Lynn, Mass.)
- "Professor See", review of Brief Biography and Popular Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of T.J.J. See, The Nation, xcviii, 1914, pp 307–308
- "Capt. T. J. J. See, Astronomer, 96: Co-Founder of Observatory Dies -- Disputed Einstein" The New York Times, Jul 5, 1962, p 22
- Obituary, Physics Today, volume 15(8), (August, 1962) page 80
- "The Sage of Mare Island" from The Astronomical Scrapbook, Joseph Ashbrook, 1984, Cambridge University Press, pp. 111–115. (See also Sky & Telescope, October, 1962, page 193)