Scope and Content Note
The papers of Thomas Jefferson Jackson See (1866-1962) consist of a diary, correspondence, writings, financial papers, photographs, scrapbooks, and printed matter covering the period 1887-1960, with the bulk of the material dated between 1897 and 1930. Most of See’s early records were destroyed in a fire in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1897. See began his career as professor of mathematics in the Navy Department in 1899 and was retired in 1930. The greater part of his career was spent as astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, Mare Island, California, after 1903. The See Papers are organized into seven series: Diary; Family Correspondence; General Correspondence; Speech, Article, and Book File; Miscellany; Scrapbooks, and Addition.
The Diary in the collection dates from 1899 and relates largely to See’s employment as a professor of mathematics for the navy. The Family Correspondence spans the years 1898-1940, and an extensive file of General Correspondence, 1887-1960, concerns See’s work in practical and mathematical astronomy. The Speech, Article, and Book File pertains to astronomy, mathematics, wave theory, relativity theory and Albert Einstein, geodesy, and cosmogony. An Addition series consists mostly of writings by See.
Correspondents in the papers include D. R. Adams, Howard Ayers, Champ Clark, Henry Love Clark, Arthur Spencer Dayton, Eric Doolittle, Otto von Geldern, A. O. Granger, Arthur B. Hancock, Carrie Harrison, I. Minis Hayes, Thomas Parker Nichols, Walter Hines Page, Edward C. Pickering, L. V. Redman, Walter Loring Webb, and Milton Updegraff.