Adams, John Couch – English astronomer and mathematician

Adams, John Couch – English astronomer and mathematician

John Couch Adams was an English astronomer and mathematician. He was born in Laneast, Cornwall, England, and attended Saint Johns College at the University of Cambridge. Based on unexplained irregularities in the motion of the planet Uranus, Adams suggested, in 1845, the existence of a more distant undiscovered planet. The same conclusion was reached by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier about nine months later, and confirmed in 1846 by the discovery of Neptune near the position predicted by both scientists. Adams was appointed the Lowndean professor of astronomy and geometry at Cambridge in 1859 and director of the Cambridge Observatory in 1861. He later worked on the secular acceleration of the moon's mean motion and analyzed the perturbations of the Leonid meteors.

Couch Adams

Adams, John Couch was a one of two people who independently discovered the planet Neptune. On July 3, 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. . . .” In September 1845 he gave James Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory, accurate information on where the new planet, as yet unobserved, could be found; but unfortunately the planet was not recognized at Cambridge until much later, after its discovery at the Berlin Observatory on Sept. 23, 1846.

Adams also showed (1866) that the Leonid meteor shower had an orbit closely matching that of a comet (1866 I). He described the Moon's motion more exactly than had Pierre-Simon Laplace and studied terrestrial magnetism.

After being made professor of mathematics at the University of St. Andrews (Fife) in 1858 and Lowndean professor of astronomy and geometry at Cambridge in the year 1859, he became director of Cambridge Observatory in 1861.