The problem was practically untouched when, in 1841, an undergraduate of St. John's College, Cambridge, formed the resolution of grappling with it. The projected task was an arduous one. There were no guiding precedents for its conduct. Analytical obstacles had to be encountered so formidable as to appear invincible even to such a mathematician as Airy. John Couch Adams, however, had no sooner taken his degree, which he did as senior wrangler in January, 1843, than he set resolutely to work, and on October 21, 1845, was able to communicate to the Astronomer Royal numerical estimates of the elements and mass of the unknown planet, together with an indication of its actual place in the heavens. These results, it has been well said,[216] gave "the final and inexorable proof" of the validity of Newton's Law. The date October 21, 1845, "may therefore be regarded as marking a distinct epoch in the history of gravitational astronomy." Sir George Biddell Airy had begun in 1835 his long and energetic administration of the Royal Observatory, and was already in possession of data vitally important to the momentous inquiry then on foot. At his suggestion, and under his superintendence, the reduction of all the planetary observations made at Greenwich from 1750 onwards had been undertaken in 1833. The results, published in 1846, constituted a permanent and universal stock of materials for the correction of planetary theory. But in the meantime, investigators, both native and foreign, were freely supplied with the "places and errors," which, clearly exhibiting the discrepancies between observation and calculation--between what _was_ and what was _expected_--formed the very groundwork of future improvements.