Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous ( Alphabetically) Next Welcome page
John Couch Adams was an astronomer and mathematician who was the first person to predict the position of a planet beyond Uranus.
Adams was educated at Cambridge and became a fellow. While an undergraduate he decided to investigate
the irregularities of the motion of Uranus...in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it .
In September 1845 Adams gave accurate information on the position of the new planet to James Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory. Action was not taken by Cambridge and Urbain Le Verrier's later prediction was published before Adams's and led directly to the discovery of Neptune on September 23, 1846 by the Berlin Observatory.
Adams became Regius Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews in 1858 and Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge in 1859. He was named director of the Cambridge Observatory in 1861.
Adams's made many other contributions to astronomy, notably his studies of the Leonid meteor shower (1866), his description of the motion of the Moon which was more accurate than that of Laplace and his study of terrestrial magnetism.
He will be best remembered, however, for his role as the co-discoverer of Neptune.
The portrait above was taken when he was in St Andrews by the pioneer photographer John Adamson.
References elsewhere in this archive:
Tell me about Adams's work on orbits and gravitation
References:
Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index Previous ( Alphabetically) Next Welcome page History Topics Index Famous curves index Chronologies Birthplace Map Mathematicians of the day Anniversaries for the year Search Form Simple Search Form Search Suggestions