23 JANUARY 1892, Page 1

Death, though not this time through his new weapon the

influenza, has seized another notable victim. This is Professor John Couch Adams, Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, who in 1845, forty-six years ago, discovered by purely mathematical reasoning the planet Neptune. He deduced from the perturbations of Uranus, not only that such a planet must exist, but where it must be ; and he was right,—probably the greatest single feat ever accom- plished by inductive reasoning. The recognition of his discovery was delayed through some correspondence with the Astronomer-Royal for nearly a year, and in the interval the French mathematician Leverrier mastered the same problem, and anticipated the Englishman in proclaiming his discovery. The Royal Astronomical Society, after a careful investigation of the facts, in 1848 bestowed its gold medal upon both. Professor Adams also settled the orbit of the swarm of shooting-stars which is known to astronomers as the Leonids, and recurs every thirty-three years. Professor Adams, though considered by those who knew as one of the glories of England, was utterly unknown, even by name, to the mass of Englishmen, and lived a retired life in Cambridge, occupied with studies in recondite mathematics.