BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. xxxin 



The honours so freely and deservedly bestowed upon Le Verrier in France and other 

 countries form a striking contrast to the general want of appreciation with which Adams's 

 work was at first received. But there were conspicuous exceptions. In 1847, on the 

 occasion of the Queen's visit to Cambridge, the honour of knighthood was offered to 

 Adams, but this offer he felt obliged to decline. The members of St John's College, also, 

 were not slow in showing their sense of the honour he had conferred upon his college and 

 the University, for in a very short time a fund, producing about 80 per annum, was 

 raised for establishing a prize to be connected with his name. This fund was offered to 

 the University, and accepted on April 7, 1848. The Adams Prize, which is biennial, is 

 awarded for the best essay on some subject of pure mathematics, astronomy, or other 

 branch of natural philosophy. 



A French translation of Adams's memoir on the motion of Uranus was published in 

 Liouville's Journal de Mathematiques pures et appliquees for 1875. The editor, M. Resal, 

 stated that he had been led to undertake this republication by the pressing solicitations 

 of several eminent mathematicians. In introducing the memoir he writes : '' Le problemc 

 fut resolu simultane'ment, en Angleterre par M. Adams, et en France par M. Leverrier, 

 qui, ainsi que le reconnait M. Adams, a public le premier les resultats de ses recherches. 

 ...II est impossible de rencontrer, dans 1'histoire des sciences, une decouverte qui fasse 

 plus d'honneur au genie humain. Les lois de Newton recevaient ainsi la plus eclatante 

 des confirmations, et 1'Astronomie, desormais indiscutable dans ses principes, etait arrivee 

 a 1'dtat de science parfaite. Le Me'moire de M. Adams a valu, a juste titre, a son auteur 

 la plus glorieuse ce'le'brite' : il est digne, en effet, de figurer a cote des plus beaux 

 me'moires de Laplace et Lagrange." This republication of the memoir, after an interval 

 of thirty years, in a purely mathematical journal, derives additional interest from the fact 

 that Adams added a few notes at the end, some of which relate to the objections made 

 by Professor Benjamin Peirce to the legitimacy of the methods pursued by himself and 

 Le Verrier. In Peirce's paper, which was published in 1847, it was contended that the 

 period of Neptune differed so considerably from that of the hypothetical planet that the 

 modes of procedure adopted were unreliable, so that the finding of the planet was partly 

 due to a happy accident. In reply to this, Adams points out that the objection would 

 be valid if the object in view had been to represent the perturbations of Uranus during 



surprised when I tell you that the strangest opponents to this was nothing at all, simply because the over-modest 



Mr Adams's claims to consideration are to be found in man communicated his results to Airy and Challis, that 



England, of course with the exception of France. All the planet might be looked for, instead of bringing his 



acknowledge M. Le Verrier's merits, and all admit his investigation before the world as he ought to have done. 



undoubted claim to independent discovery. All are agreed, Surely it is a greater honour to science that two men 



too, that in making public his results and investigations in should independently have come to the same conclusion 



the masterly and confident way he did, he deserves the from the same data than that one should have hit on it, 



highest praise. As to national feeling (which, by the as it were, accidentally. Thanks to Struve and Biot, &c. 



way, is too often national injustice) there is absolutely our anti-Adamites are calmer, and as there never was 



none whatever, so far as I know, or among astronomers. any opposition to Le Verrier, we are quite satisfied at 



In England at present the current runs the other way, present, and so I hope are the two discoverers. I think 



and though I very much prefer this failing of the two, there is a hope that Mr Adams will continue his astro- 



yet it is provoking too. I assure you that it was with nomical researches. In any other country there could be 



difficulty that one could get a hearing, while pointing out no doubt of it, but in England there is no carriers for 



the fact that Mr Adams had deduced the elements and men of science. The Law or the Church seizes on all 



place of the planet in October, 1845. I have been told talent which is not independently rich or careless about 



repeatedly by those who should have known better that wealth." 



62 



