HENRI VICTOR REGNAULT. . 455 



and position of sucli a body enabled hira to present to the Academy, on 

 June 1, 1846, a paper predicting the position of the unknown planet. 

 Three months later, Galle examined this portion of the heavens at the 

 request of LeVerrier, and discovered a star within two degrees of the 

 computed place, which was not on the maps, and which proved to be 

 the new planet. This discovery was at once received with the greatest 

 enthusiasm. Honors poured in on LeVerrier from every side, and it 

 was even proposed to name the planet from him. Fortunately, how- 

 ever, as in the case of Uranus, cooler judgment prevailed, and the 

 precedent of naming the planets from the Roman deities was not 

 broken. It afterwards appeared that the English mathematician, 

 Adams, was engaged on this same problem, though by a less rigorous 

 method, and an equal share of the glory of the discovery was claimed 

 by his friends for him. It has also been shown that by making differ- 

 ent assumptions LeVerrier might have arrived at widely different 

 results. The fact, nevertheless, remains, that LeVerrier was the first 

 to predict on theoretical grounds the true position of the unknown 

 planet, and that in consequence of this prediction Neptune was dis- 

 covered. 



On the death of Arago in 1854, LeVerrier was appointed his suc- 

 cessor as Director of the Paris Observatory. In 1870, he was re- 

 moved from this position, but reinstated in 1873, when he resumed 

 the publications of the " Annals of the Observatory," which had been 

 discontinued during his absence. Although a mathematician rather 

 than an observer, he introduced many important changes in the work 

 of the Paris Observatory, and greatly increased its efficiency. For 

 many years, he was a senator and member of the Superior Council of 

 Public Instruction, and was thus enabled to render material aid to 

 the cause of higher education in Fraiice. He was the originator and 

 President of I'Association Scientifique de France, and to him is its 

 success largely due. During the last year of his life, he was much 

 interested in International Meteorology, and succeeded in establishing 

 a great number of stations in France. After an illness of about six 

 months, he died on the morning of September 23d, 1877, on the thirty- 

 first anniversary of the discovery of Neptune. 



HENRI VICTOR REGNAULT. 



Henri Victor Regnault was born at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 

 2l8t of July, 1811, and died in Paris on the 19th of January of the 

 present year. He obtained, while still a lad, a position in a drapery 



