iv Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinhurgli. 
the service, as the final determining star was taken from the British 
Association Catalogue, which had just been placed in the hands of 
astronomers. 
On October 1st, Professor Challis heard of the successful search 
at Berlin, and on turning to his notes, not only readily identified 
the new planet amongst the numerous stars which he had recorded 
nearly two months before, but also found that it had again been 
seen on September 29th, when, aided by a hint from Le Verrier’s last 
paper, the observer singled out the planet from 300 stars, and 
appended to it the note “ it seems to have a disk.” The next night 
was cloudy at Cambridge, and, as has just been said, the news of the 
discovery came the following day. 
It is not too much to say that the whole world rang with these 
tidings, but for a moment it seemed as if a painful international 
rivalry might arise as to the relative merits of the two great mathe- 
maticians to whom science owed one of her grandest triumphs. 
Better counsels, however, prevailed ; and with an impartiality that 
will ever be regarded with satisfaction, the Testimonial of the Royal 
Astronomical Society was awarded to Le Verrier as well as to Adams 
in 1848. The Institute of France made Adams one of its corre- 
sponding members, as did also the Academy of Sciences of St 
Petersburg and many other societies. From Oxford he received 
the honorary degree of D.C.L., and that of LL.D. from Dublin and 
Edinburgh. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of this Society in 
1849. 
In 1851, Adams became President of the Royal Astronomical 
Society, to which position he was again elected in 1874. In 
1858, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University 
of St Andrews, but he returned to Cambridge in the following 
year, to take up the Lowndean Professorship of Astronomy and 
Geometry, which he held until his death. Three years later, he 
became Director of the University Observatory. Apart from many 
observations of planets, comets, &c., the zone + 25° to -f 30° of 
stars down to the ninth magnitude was observed under his superin- 
tendence with the Cambridge transit-circle as a component part of 
the great international work set on foot by the Astronomische 
Gesellschaft. The actual observations are all finished and the 
reductions far advanced. 
