John Couch AdamsDied 21 Jan 1892 at age 72 (born 5 Jun 1819).English astronomer and mathematician, one of two people who independently discovered the planet Neptune. On 3 Jul 1841, Adams had entered in his journal: “Formed a design in the beginning of this week of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus ... in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it.” Adams made many other contributions to astronomy, notably his studies of the Leonid meteor shower (1866) where he showed that the orbit of the meteor shower was very similar to that of a comet. He was able to correctly conclude that the meteor shower was associated with the comet. Adams considered the motion of the Moon, and studied terrestrial magnetism. |
