Abstract
The discovery of Neptune was undeniably one of the major scientific events of the 19th century. It is well known that the effort to discover the troubling planet responsible for the abnormal behavior of Uranus was carried out simultaneously in England and France, and that Le Verrier was the first to announce the discovery, John Couch Adams having independently obtained similar results. From these events, interminable controversies followed, in which nationalism played a large role, and even today, they are not totally extinguished (In 1880, Aimable Gaillot (1834–1921), the only pupil of Le Verrier, wrote (Gaillot, 1880:103): “There had been in the past discussions, more passionate than impartial, about the priority of the discovery; today, the question is settled: to each one his due, and the mutual esteem between the two scientists proves that both, at least, were giving justice to each other. But it is to the sole Le Verrier that the discovery of the planet is due.” However, controversies revived from time to time). But at least it is now possible to look at these matters with cooler heads, and with relative neutrality. Recent research, including the translation into English of my biographies of Arago and Le Verrier, facilitate offering this French view of events. This is the subject of the present chapter.
First, let us examine the problem that Le Verrier set out to tackle: the problem of the motion of Uranus.
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Notes
- 1.
These letters are preserved in the archives of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge, UK, in Papers of George Airy, general ref. GBR/0180/RGO 6. Important extracts are to be found in Airy G.B. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 7, 1846:121–144.
- 2.
From the birth certificate of Le Verrier, reproduced in Centenaire de la naissance de U.-J.-J. Le Verrier (hereafter Centenaire), p. 8.
- 3.
Jean-Baptiste Biot attempted to explain Le Verrier’s methods in six papers in Journal des Savants (October 1846, p. 577–596; November 1846, p. 641–664; December 1846, p. 750–768; January 1847, p. 18–35; February 1847, p. 65–86; March 1847, p. 182–187). Arrived at the third paper, he wrote: “As I progress in the task I have undertaken, the difficulty of the subject seems to increase.” In order to understand what Le Verrier did, the best thing is to read his own papers. A more elementary account can be found in Tisserand & Andoyer (1912).
- 4.
Congratulation letters from Johann Franz Encke, Christian Schumacher, Émile Plantamour, Otto Struve, Francesco de Vico, Karl Ludwig von Littrow, Benjamin Valz and George Biddell Airy are published in Centenaire.
- 5.
Contrary to planets, comets are designated by the name of their discoverer; actually, it is Jean-Louis Pons who discovered the comet in question, but because Encke found previous observations and showed that it was the comet with the shortest known period, his name has been given to it; the same thing had occurred before with Halley’s comet .
References
The preceding text comes with a few changes from Chap. 1 and 2 of Lequeux, J., 2013 Le Verrier—Magnificent and Detestable Astronomer, Springer. London.
The Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences (CRAS), Annuaire du Bureau des longitudes (Ann. BdL), Connaissance des temps (CdT), Journal des savants, Centenaire de la naissance de U.-J.-J. Le Verrier (Centenaire), Tisserand (1889–1896) and Tisserand & Andoyer (1912), can be consulted freely on the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: https://gallica.bnf.fr.
Airy, G. B., 1846 Account of the Observations at the Cambridge Observatory for detecting the Planet exterior to Uranus. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 7, Issue 9, November 1846.
Baum, R., 2007. The Haunted Observatory. Amherst, New York, Prometheus.
Bouvard, A., 1821. Tables astronomiques publiées par le Bureau des longitudes de France…, Paris, Bachelier et Uzard, accessible via gallica.bnf.fr
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Gaillot, A., 1880, Le Verrier et son œuvre, La Nature 2d semester 1880, p. 102–107.
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Lequeux, J., 2013, Le Verrier, magnificent and detestable astronomer, edited with an introduction by William Sheehan, translation by Bernard Sheehan, Springer, New York.
Sheehan W. & Thurber, S., 2007, John Couch Adams’s Asperger syndrome and the British non-discovery of Neptune, electronic publication. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2007.0187
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Acknowledgements
I thank Bernard Sheehan for his excellent translation of my book on Le Verrier. I also wish to acknowledge fruitful exchanges with Davor Krajnović during the preparation of our chapters.
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Lequeux, J. (2021). Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier: Predictions Leading to Discovery. In: Sheehan, W., Bell, T.E., Kennett, C., Smith, R. (eds) Neptune: From Grand Discovery to a World Revealed. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54218-4_5
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