John Couch Adams
John Couch Adams University of St. Andrews | |
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Academic advisors | John Hymers |
John Couch Adams
His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position of
Adams was Lowndean Professor in the University of Cambridge from 1859 until his death. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866. In 1884, he attended the International Meridian Conference as a delegate for Britain.
A
Early life
Adams was born at Lidcot, a farm at Laneast,[1] near Launceston, Cornwall, the eldest of seven children. His parents were Thomas Adams (1788–1859), a poor tenant farmer, and his wife, Tabitha Knill Grylls (1796–1866). The family were devout Wesleyans who enjoyed music and among John's brothers, Thomas became a missionary, George a farmer, and William Grylls Adams, professor of natural philosophy and astronomy at King's College London. Tabitha was a farmer's daughter but had received a rudimentary education from John Couch, her uncle, whose small library she had inherited. John was intrigued by the astronomy books from an early age.[2]
John attended the Laneast village school where he acquired some
In 1836, his mother inherited a small estate at
Discovery of Neptune
In 1821,
After his
Apparently, Adams communicated his work to James Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory, in mid-September 1845, but there is some controversy as to how. On 21 October 1845, Adams, returning from a Cornwall vacation, without appointment, twice called on Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy in Greenwich. Failing to find him at home, Adams reputedly left a manuscript of his solution, again without the detailed calculations. Airy responded with a letter to Adams asking for some clarification.[6] It appears that Adams did not regard the question as "trivial", as is often alleged, but he failed to complete a response. Various theories have been discussed as to Adams's failure to reply, such as his general nervousness, procrastination and disorganisation.[6]
Meanwhile,
A keen controversy arose in France and England as to the merits of the two astronomers. As the facts became known, there was wide recognition that the two astronomers had independently solved the problem of Uranus, and each was ascribed equal importance.[1][2] However, there have been subsequent assertions that "The Brits Stole Neptune" and that Adams's British contemporaries retrospectively ascribed him more credit than he was due.[6] But it is also notable (and not included in some of the foregoing discussion references) that Adams himself publicly acknowledged Le Verrier's priority and credit (not forgetting to mention the role of Galle) in the paper that he gave 'On the Perturbations of Uranus' to the Royal Astronomical Society in November 1846:[8]
I mention these dates merely to show that my results were arrived at independently, and previously to the publication of those of M. Le Verrier, and not with the intention of interfering with his just claims to the honours of the discovery; for there is no doubt that his researches were first published to the world, and led to the actual discovery of the planet by Dr. Galle, so that the facts stated above cannot detract, in the slightest degree, from the credit due to M. Le Verrier.
Adams held no bitterness towards Challis or Airy[2] and acknowledged his own failure to convince the astronomical world:[6]
I could not expect however that practical astronomers, who were already fully occupied with important labours, would feel as much confidence in the results of my investigations, as I myself did.
Work style
His lay fellowship at St John's College came to an end in 1852, and the existing statutes did not permit his re-election. However, Pembroke College, which possessed greater freedom, elected him in the following year to a lay fellowship which he held for the rest of his life.
Despite the fame of his work on Neptune, Adams also did much important work on gravitational astronomy and terrestrial magnetism. He was particularly adept at fine numerical calculations, often making substantial revisions to the contributions of his predecessors.
In 1852, he published new and accurate tables of the Moon's
He had hoped that this work would leverage him into the vacant post as superintendent of HM Nautical Almanac Office but John Russell Hind was preferred, Adams lacking the necessary ability as an organiser and administrator.[2]
Lunar theory — Secular acceleration of the Moon
Since ancient times, the Moon's mean rate of motion relative to the stars had been treated as being constant, but in 1695, Edmond Halley had suggested that this mean rate was gradually increasing.[10] Later, during the eighteenth century, Richard Dunthorne estimated the rate as +10" (arcseconds/century2) in terms of the resulting difference in lunar longitude,[11] an effect that became known as the secular acceleration of the Moon. Pierre-Simon Laplace had given an explanation in 1787 in terms of changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. He considered only the radial gravitational force on the Moon from the Sun and Earth but obtained close agreement with the historical record of observations.[12]
In 1820, at the insistence of the
In 1853, Adams published a paper[14] showing that, while tangential terms vanish in the first-order theory of Laplace, they become substantial when quadratic terms are admitted. Small terms integrated in time come to have large effects and Adams concluded that Plana had overestimated the secular acceleration by approximately 1.66" per century.[13]
At first, Le Verrier rejected Adams's results.
In 1858 Adams became professor of mathematics at the University of St Andrews, but lectured only for a session, before returning to Cambridge for the Lowndean professorship of astronomy and geometry. Two years later he succeeded Challis as director of the Cambridge Observatory, a post Adams held until his death.[1]
The Leonids
The great
Using a powerful and elaborate analysis, Adams ascertained that this cluster of meteors, which belongs to the Solar System, traverses an elongated ellipse in 33.25 years, and is subject to definite perturbations from the larger planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. These results were published in 1867.[1]
Some experts consider this Adams's most substantial achievement. His "definitive orbit" for the Leonids coincided with that of the
Later career
Ten years later, George William Hill described a novel and elegant method for attacking the problem of lunar motion. Adams briefly announced his own unpublished work in the same field, which, following a parallel course had confirmed and supplemented Hill's.[1]
Over a period of forty years, he periodically addressed the determination of the constants in
Adams had boundless admiration for Newton and his writings and many of his papers bear the cast of Newton's thought.
The post of Astronomer Royal was offered him in 1881, but he preferred to pursue his teaching and research in Cambridge. He was British delegate to the International Meridian Conference at Washington in 1884, when he also attended the meetings of the British Association at Montreal and of the American Association at Philadelphia.[1]
Honours
- 1847 He is reputed to have been offered a knighthood on Queen Victoria's 1847 Cambridge visit but to have declined, either out of modesty,[1] or fear of the financial consequences of such social distinction;[2]
- 1847 Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;[18]
- 1848 Copley medal of the Royal Society;[1]
- 1848 Adams Prize, founded by the members of St John's College, to be given biennially for the best treatise on a mathematical subject;[1]
- 1849 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh;
- 1851 and 1874 President of the Royal Astronomical Society (1851–1853 and 1874–1876).[1]
Family and death
After a long illness, Adams died at Cambridge on 21 January 1892 and was buried near his home in St Giles Cemetery, now the
Memorials
- Memorial in Westminster Abbey with a portrait medallion, by Albert Bruce-Joy;[21]
- A bust, by Joy in the hall of St John's College, Cambridge;[1]
- Another youthful bust belongs to the Royal Astronomical Society;[1]
- Portraits by:
- Hubert von Herkomer in Pembroke College;[1]
- Paul Raphael Montord in the combination room of St John's;[1]
- A memorial tablet, with an inscription by Archbishop Benson, in Truro Cathedral;[1]
- Passmore Edwards erected a public institute in his honour at Launceston, near his birthplace;[1]
- Adams Nunatak, a nunatak on Neptune Glacier in Alexander Island in Antarctica, is named after him.
Obituaries
- The Times, 22 January 1892, p. 6 col.d (link on this page)
- [Anon.] (1892). "John Couch Adams". Astronomical Journal. 11: 112. doi:10.1086/101653.
- J. W. L. Glaisher (1892). "Obituary: John Couch Adams". .
- Bibcode:1892Obs....15..173G.
- [Anon.] (1891–92) Journal of the British Astronomical Association 2: 196–7
About Adams and the discovery of Neptune
- Bibcode:1847MmRAS..16..385A.
- Airy, W., ed. (1896). The Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy. Cambridge University Press. from Project Gutenberg
- Baum, R.; Sheehan, W. (1997). In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Universe. Plenum.
- Chapman, A. (1988). "Private research and public duty: George Biddell Airy and the search for Neptune". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 19 (2): 121–139. S2CID 126074998.
- Doggett, L. E. (1997) "Celestial mechanics", in Lankford, J., ed. (1997). History of Astronomy, an Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 131–40. ISBN 9780815303220.
- Dreyer, J. L. E.; Turner, H. H., eds. (1987) [1923]. History of the Royal Astronomical Society [1]: 1820–1920. pp. 161–2.
- Grosser, M. (1962). The Discovery of Neptune. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-21225-8.
- "Adams, John Couch". ISBN 0-684-10114-9.
- Harrison, H. M (1994). Voyager in Time and Space: The Life of John Couch Adams, Cambridge Astronomer. Lewes: Book Guild, ISBN 0-86332-918-7
- Hughes, D. W. (1996). "J. C. Adams, Cambridge and Neptune". Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 50 (2): 245–8. S2CID 146396595.
- J. W. L. G. [J. W. L. Glaisher] (1882). "James Challis". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 43 (4): 160–79. .
- Kollerstrom, Nick (2001). "Neptune's Discovery. The British Case for Co-Prediction". University College London. Archived from the original on 11 November 2005. Retrieved 19 March 2007.
- Moore, P. (1996). The Planet Neptune: An Historical Survey before Voyager. Praxis.
- Sampson, R.A. (1904). "A description of Adams's manuscripts on the perturbations of Uranus". Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society. 54: 143–161. Bibcode:1904MmRAS..54..143S.
- "John Couch Adams and the discovery of Neptune". Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society. 2: 33–88. 1947.
- Smith, R. W. (1989). "The Cambridge network in action: the discovery of Neptune". Isis. 80 (303): 395–422. S2CID 144191212.
- Standage, T. (2000). The Neptune File. Penguin Press.
- Lyttleton, Raymond Arthur, (1968) Mysteries of the Solar System, Clarendon, Oxford, UK (1968), Chapter 7: The discovery of Neptune[22]
By Adams
- Adams, J. C., ed. W. G. Adams & R. A. Sampson (1896–1900) The Scientific Papers of John Couch Adams, 2 vols, London: Cambridge University Press, with a memoir by J. W. L. Glaisher:
- Adams, J. C., ed. R. A. Sampson (1900) Lectures on the Lunar Theory, London: Cambridge University Press[24]
- A collection, virtually complete, of Adams's papers regarding the discovery of Neptune was presented by Mrs Adams to the library of St John's College, see: Sampson (1904), and also:
- "The collected papers of Prof. Adams", Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 7 (1896–97)
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 53 184;
- Observatory, 15 174;
- Nature, 34 565; 45 301;
- Astronomical Journal, No.254;
- R. Grant, History of Physical Astronomy, p. 168; and
- Edinburgh Review, No.381, p. 72.
- The papers were ultimately lodged with the Royal Greenwich Observatory and evacuated to Herstmonceux Castle during World War II. After the war, they were stolen by Olin J. Eggen and only recovered in 1998, hampering much historical research in the subject.[25]
See also
- Intrigue at RAS and Cambridge Observatory from the biography of Richard Christopher Carrington
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 177–178.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/123. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Adams, John Couch (ADMS839JC)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Bouvard, A. (1821) Tables astronomiques publiées par le Bureau des Longitudes de France, Paris, FR: Bachelier
- ^ [Anon.] (2001) "Bouvard, Alexis", Encyclopædia Britannica, Deluxe CDROM edition
- ^ PMID 15597985.
- S2CID 4074284.
- ^ Adams, J.C. (1846). "On the Perturbations of Uranus (p.265)". Appendices to various nautical almanacs between the years 1834 and 1854 (reprints published 1851) (note that this is a 50Mb download of the pdf scan of the nineteenth-century printed book). UK Nautical Almanac Office, 1851. Retrieved 23 January 2008.
- S2CID 146702903.
- S2CID 186214936. Also Philos. Trans. R. Soc. (Abridgements) vol.4 (1694–1702) pp. 60 at 65: Halley concluded his 1695 article on middle-eastern antiquities by writing: "And if any curious traveller ... would please to observe, with due care, the phases of the moon's eclipses at Bagdat, Aleppo and Alexandria, thereby to determine their longitudes, they could not do the science of astronomy a greater service: for in and near these places were made all the observations by which the mean motions of the sun and moon are limited: and I could then pronounce in what proportion the moon's motion does accelerate; which that it does, I think I can demonstrate." But it was left to Richard Dunthorneactually to make the first quantitative assessment of the Moon's apparent acceleration.
- S2CID 186210495.as "On the Acceleration of the Moon, by the Rev. Richard Dunthorne".
-- also given in Philosophical Transactions (abridgements) (1809), vol.9 (for 1744–49), pp. 669–675 - ISBN 0-7503-1015-4.
- ^ Bibcode:1866MNRAS..26..157.
- S2CID 186213591.
- ^ S2CID 116653391.
- ^ "Introduction to the Newton Manuscripts Catalogue". The Newton Project. Retrieved 24 August 2007.
- Sir Isaac Newton, the Scientific Part of which has been Presented by the Earl of Portsmouth to the University of Cambridge, drawn up by the Syndicate appointed 6 November 1982, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1888
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
- ISBN 0-9563917-1-0.
- ^ O'Donoghue, J. (March 2004). "Consumer Price Inflation since 1750". Economic Trends. 604: 38–46.
- ^ 'The Abbey Scientists' Hall, A.R. p56: London; Roger & Robert Nicholson; 1966
- ^ Lyttleton, Raymond Arthur (1968). Mysteries of the Solar System. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 215–250.
- .
- ^ .
- ^ Kollerstrom, N. (2001). "Eggen takes the papers". The British Case for Co-prediction. University College London. Archived from the original on 6 February 2005. Retrieved 23 August 2007.
External links
- Works by or about John Couch Adams at Wikisource
- Biography on the St Andrews database
- ScienceWorld.
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "John Couch Adams", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
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- Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. .
- John Couch Adams at Find a Grave
- Davor Krajnovic, John Couch Adams: mathematical astronomer, college friend of George Gabriel Stokes and promotor of women in astronomy