John Couch Adams

John Couch Adams was a British mathematician and astronomer who used mathematics alone to predict the existence and position of the planet Neptune, working from irregularities he identified in the observed orbit of Uranus. He began the calculation in 1841, and the planet was found close to his predicted position on September 23, 1846, though the apportionment of credit between Adams and the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, who made an independent prediction, remained a matter of dispute for years afterward. Adams graduated from Cambridge in 1843 as senior wrangler and Smith's Prize winner, later became Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge in 1859, a post he held until his death, and served as Director of the Cambridge Observatory from 1860. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 1848 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866, and he declined the position of Astronomer Royal in 1881 to remain at Cambridge. The Adams Prize awarded by Cambridge University and an outer ring of Neptune are named in his honor.