John Couch Adams - Definition and Overview

For other people named John Adams, see John Adams (disambiguation).

John Couch Adams (June 5 1819 – January 21, 1892), was a British mathematician. His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position of Neptune, using only mathematics. The calculations were made to explain discrepancies with Uranus's orbit and the laws of Kepler and Newton. At the same time, but unknown to both, the same calculations were made by Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier would assist Galle in locating the planet (September 1846); which was found within 1° of its predicted location, a point in Aquarius. Adams was born in Laneast, England and died in Cambridge.

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866.

In 1884, he attended the International Meridian Conference as a delegate for Great Britain.

A crater on the Moon is jointly named after him, Walter Sydney Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams. Neptune's outermost known ring and the asteroid 1996 Adams are also named after him.

See also

• Neptune (planet)
• List of Cornish people

References

• Harrison, H. M (1994). Voyager in time and space: the life of John Couch Adams, Cambridge astronomer. Lewes: Book Guild. ISBN 0863329187.

External links

• http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Adams.html
• Awarding of RAS gold medal: MNRAS 26 (1866) 157 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0026//0000157.000.html)

Obituaries

• AJ 11 (1892) 112 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/AJ.../0011//0000112.000.html)
• MNRAS 53 (1892) 184 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0053//0000184.000.html)
• Obs 15 (1892) 173 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/Obs../0015//0000173.000.html)