 This minor planet was named after Simon Newcomb (1835–1909), a Canadian–American professor of astronomy and director of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office at the United States Naval Observatory.He worked on cometary and planetary orbits and is known for his "Tables of the Motion of the Earth on its Axis and Around the Sun", a mathematical development of the position of the Earth in the Solar System.Newcomb also measured the speed of light and revised the astronomical unit.