Adams, JOHN COUCH

Adams, JOHN COUCH, discoverer, simultaneously with Leverrier, of the planet Neptune, was born near Launceston in Cornwall, 1819. He was sent in 1839 to St John's College, Cambridge, where, in 1843, he attained the honour of senior wrangler, and became a mathematical tutor. Soon after taking his degree, he undertook to find out the cause of the irregularities in the motion of Uranus, anticipating, indeed, his own and Leverrier's dis- covery—that they are due to the influence of a then unknown planet. Leverrier did not commence his researches till the summer of 1845; but on the 10th of November published the results of his calculations, assigning to the unknown planet almost the same place as Adams had done in a paper which he left with the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory in the previous October, but which he neglected to publish. Leverrier thus acquired a larger share in the honour of the discovery; but the merit of Adams is not less, and the council of the Royal Astronomical Society awarded equal honours to both in 1848. Neptune was actually observed, near the place assigned, by Galle at Berlin in September 1846. In 1858 Adams was appointed to the Lowndean Professorship of Astronomy, Cambridge. He made important researches as to the secular acceleration of the moon's mean motion, on the November meteors, and on other subjects. He died at Cambridge, 21st January 1892. See his Scientific Papers (ed. by W. G. Adams, with Life by Glaisher, 1896-98).