The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1895-06-15
A GREAT ASTRONOMER.

with brave generous heart.
A GREAT ASTRONOMER.
Prof. Adams, the Discoyerer of Nep.
tune, Passes Away at Ripe OLD
| Age. 4
| The world, it Is often said, knows
nothing Of its greatest men. This is
certainly true of those who have achiev-
| ed fame in sciences remote. from practi-
cal or utilitarian interests tronom-
| ers, for example. We wonder how many
people know more than the name, II
they know SO much, of the late Prof.
John Couch Adams, in whose honor a
memorial window was unveiled on
Thursday In Westminster Abbey? Yet
Adams was not unworthy to rank with
the very greatest of the mighty dead who
sleep In the illustrous Abbey. AS an as
tronomer and a mathematician he Is
ranked with Kepler, Laplace, and even
Newton himself, of the truth Of whose
| philosophy Adams brought forward
| browning proof more striking than any
| Newton himself had been able to adj
duce. The discovery Of Nepttne---it was
Adams distinctive title to francis one
| Of the romances Of astronomy and g
striking triumph Of deductive reasoning.
Adams, who was the son of small
| Cornwall farmer, came up to Cambridge
when he was %, and won the senior
wranglership three years later. In 1841,
while he was still but % years Of age,
he had applied himself to the investiga-
ton Of the movements of the planet
Uranus in order. to find out whether
they might be attributed to the action of
some unknown planet, and thence It pos
| isible to determine approximately the
clemens Of its orbit. It had long been
known that there were certain unac-
,countable irregularities in the move
ments Of Uranus. So far back sc. 1851
Herschell had suspected that they were
due to the existence of an unknown
planet. But generations OF astronomers
had gazed on the: heavens without plac-
ing the missing world. It was left for
Adams to achieve this unrivalled dis
tinction. Without a telescope, in the
quiet of his study. by sheer force of sci
entific reasoning from mathematical
data he proved beyond dispute not only
that Neptune was in existence, but that
be: could, so to speak, putshis finger upon
it at the exact point where it stood in
the. immensely of space. The theoreti-
cal discovery Of the planet had been
made. Some vars later Adams sent a
paper on the subject to the English AS
tronomer Royal, which was apparently
pigeon-ho1ed. BY. a wonderful coinci-
dence, French mathematician, Lever
rier, who began his investigations three
years subsequently to Adams, had by
1916 arrived at an almost identical re-
suit. Leverrier's paper was the first to
be published, though Adams had the
prior claim to discovery. It. will be
remembered that Darwin and Wallace
hit on the theory Of evolution almost
simultaneously. Leverrier sent his re-
Sept.s23, 1916, announced the actual dis
coYery of the great planet.b by ocular EVIL
.dence. I'VE may presume that Adams
was no more convinced of It's existence
than he had been when his mathemati-
cal work had been concluded. Beathat
as tsmay, Neptune, now just 50 years
I;ago, as the result of purely prirori rea-
,soning; was added to the planets. Nep-
tune is about 5000 millions: of miles
from the center OF the solar system, and
takes 165 solar years to revolve round
the sun. 1t is about "a . times larger
than the earth, but from its extreme re-
smoteness Is OF almost inappreciable
magnitude when seen through an ordi-
nary telescope. This will, perhaps, con-
vey some idea OF the abstruse and diff
ficult; character Of the calculations with
which Adams had Ito deal. He had q
modestys worthy Of his intel ectuals pow
ers He always most amply recognized
Leverrier's genius, and never haggled
over the question Of priority. I The As
Economical Society gave each Of the dis
covers a testimonial, and their names
Neptune. The mathematical demon
stration Of the existence Of a planet still
unseen and unsupported even by the
ablest experts is Of course a triumph
one cannot hope torepeat in "a life time.
But Adams genius remained as bright
as ever, though exercised with no such
rlking: result. As Lord Kelvin ex-
planned at the unwilling ceremony on
Thursday, the astronomers reputation
does not depend entirely BY anys11eans
upon his discovery OF Neptune. By a
similar mathematical process, Adams
Eproved, s3as Lord Kelvin reminded his
hearers, the 8 I'M accuracy sof Laplace's
theory aof the accelefation of the moons
mean motion. The moon, he showed,
is our only correct time keeper, the ro-
tation Of the earth being less and less
rapid as time goes on, and therefore LA
bic to cause error, Doubtless the move
ments OF the earth are sufficiently regu-
lar toSensure substantial accuracy, but
ideal accuracy is the aim OF the seien-
tifc mind, which Isl Mortified to find
something wrong in its calculation of