"As genius and destiny have joined the names of Le Verrier and Adams,
I shall by no means put them asunder; nor will they ever be
pronounced apart so long as language shall celebrate the triumphs of
science in her sublimest walks. On the great discovery of Neptune,
which may be said to have surpassed, by intelligible and legitimate
means, the wildest pretensions of clairvoyance, it Would now be quite
superfluous for me to dilate. That glorious event and the steps
which led to it, and the various lights in which it has been placed,
are already familiar to every one having the least tincture of
science. I will only add that as there is not, nor henceforth ever
can be, the slightest rivalry on the subject between these two
illustrious men--as they have met as brothers, and as such will, I
trust, ever regard each other--we have made, we could make, no
distinction between then, on this occasion. May they both long adorn
and augment our science, and add to their own fame already so high
and pure, by fresh achievements."
Adams was elected a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1843;
but as he did not take holy orders, his Fellowship, in accordance
with the rules then existing came to an end in 1852. In the
following year he was, however, elected to a Fellowship at Pembroke
College, which he retained until the end of his life. In 1858 he was
appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of St. Andrews,
but his residence in the north was only a brief one, for in the same
year he was recalled to Cambridge as Lowndean Professor of Astronomy
and Geometry, in succession to Peacock. In 1861 Challis retired from
the Directorship of the Cambridge Observatory, and Adams was
appointed to succeed him.
The discovery of Neptune was a brilliant inauguration of the
astronomical career of Adams. He worked at, and wrote upon, the
theory of the motions of Biela's comet; he made important corrections
to the theory of Saturn; he investigated the mass of Uranus, a
subject in which he was naturally interested from its importance in
the theory of Neptune; he also improved the methods of computing the
orbits of double stars. But all these must be regarded as his minor
labours, for next to the discovery of Neptune the fame of Adams
mainly rests on his researches upon certain movements of the moon,
and upon the November meteors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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