An Hiatus in History: The British Claim for Neptune's Co-Prediction,1845–1846: Part 2

Whether Challis was present remains unclear from The Athenaeum's account (ref. 136); he had been invited to give the yearly “Report on the advance of astronomy” but had been too busy to do so. [This ref. should have appeared at the end of Part 1.].

Letter, Galle to Le Verrier, 25 September 1846, Institut de France, Centenaire de la naissance de U. J. J. Leverrier (Paris, 1911), 19.

144. The CR announced the discovery in its 5 October issue.

In the Journal des débats, 30 September 1846, a report by Foucault Léon [ Tobin William , The life and science of Léon Foucault: The man who proved the Earth rotates (Cambridge, 2003), esp. chap. 6, “Order, precision and clarity: Reporter for the Journal des débats”} stated that news of the new planet had arrived just too late for that week's séance (Monday, 28 September); the 30 September issue of Le National also reported it.

Only Hind in England had heard the news, by a letter from Dr F. Brünnow that morning (cited in his Times letter).

Letters, Le Verrier to Galle, 1 October 1846, and to Airy 1 October 1848, RGON.

Letter, Hind to Adams, 30 September 1846, JCL 9:23.2; McA 38.27.2.

Letter, Hind John to The Times, “Le Verrier's planet found”, 1 October 1846.

Letters, Glaisher J. to The Illustrated London News, dated 1 and 3 October 1846, “Le Verrier's new planet”: 10 October, 230; some copies of the 3 October issue carried the 1 October letter.

Letter, Challis to Cambridge Chronicle, dated 1 October 1846 and published two days later, “Discovery of a new planet beyond Uranus”. An undated letter from Glaisher was also published in the same issue. These letters also appeared in The Cambridge Advertiser, 7 October 1846.

Herschel , Outlines (ref. 94), 508.

Letter dated 16 October, Challis to Cambridge Chronicle, 17 October 1846, “The new planet”. 154. Chapman , “Private research” (ref. 15), 133.

Letter, Challis to Arago, 5 October 1846, “Planète Le Verrier”, CR, xxiii/15 (12 October 1846), 715–16 (only the CR transcription of this letter remains).

Letter, Le Verrier to Airy, 19 October 1846, RGON, McA 33:5.

Letter, Le Verrier to Airy, 23 October 1846, RGON, McA 33:6.

The Astronomer Royal's journal (ref. 52); see also his letter to Sheepshanks, 13 October 1846, RAS Ms Sh. 3.65.

Le Verrier , “Recherches” (ref. 51).

Letter, Airy to Challis, 14 October 1846, COA 14, McA 33:2.

Letter, Airy to Adams, 14 October 1846, JCL 2:2.2.

Letter, Airy to Le Verrier, 14 October 1846, Observatoire de Paris 1072.5, McA 33:3.

Letter, Airy to Le Verrier, 21 October 1846, Bibl. Institut de France, 3710/Ai/14; RGON; McA, 33.6.ff. 31–32.

Brewster , “Researches” (ref. 117), esp. p. 226.

Letter, Airy to Le Verrier, 14 October 1846, Observatoire de Paris 1072.5; McA 33.3; published in Comptes rendus, xxiii/16 (9 October 1846), 748–9.

Letter, Le Verrier to Airy, RGON; McA 33:4.

Letters, Challis to The Athenaeum, 3 October 1846, 1019; to Cambridge Chronicle, 16 October 1846.

Letter, Challis to The Athenaeum on “The new planet”, written on 15 October 1846 and published in the issue of 17 October, p. 1069.

Letter, Challis to The Athenaeum (ref. 168).

Arago F. , “Examen des remarques critiques et des questions de priorité que la découverte de M. Le Verrier a soulevées”, CR, xxiii/16 (19 October 1846), 741–54, esp. p. 751.

“Le vol à la planète”, Le National, 21 October 1846.

Letter, Le Verrier to The London Guardian, dated 16 October: “Le Verrier's planet”, 21 October 1846, 404.

Diary of Herschel John , Royal Society Herschel papers, MS 584.

Letter, Le Verrier to The Guardian (ref. 172).

Letter, Herschel to The Guardian, 25 October 1846, published in The Guardian, 28 October 1846, 421.

Crowe , Calendar (ref. 140), 331.

[De Morgan], “The new planet and the French astronomers”, The Athenaeum, no. 992 (31 October 1846), 1117, cols 2–3. Augustus de Morgan wrote these editorials, a fact revealed posthumously by his wife Sophie: Memoir of Augustus de Morgan by his wife Sophia Elizabeth de Morgan (London, 1882), 130.

Letter, Challis to The Athenaeum, 17 October 1846, 1069.

Letters, Hind to Adams: 18 February 1846, JCL 9:23; 28 February 1846 (ref. 100); 30 September 1846, JCL 9:23, McA 28:27.

Letter, Hind to Challis, 16 September 1846 (transcribes Faye's letter to him, arrived that morning), COA, no. 10; Smith , “The Cambridge network” (ref. 8), 407.

Letter, Hind to Sheepshanks, 12 November 1846, RAS Sh. Ms.15.2; McA 34:15.

Challis , “Account” (ref. 32), 421.

[De Morgan], “The new planet,” The Athenaeum, no. 997 (5 December 1846), 1245–6.

Letter, Airy to Challis, 12 July 1846, COA 4 (attachment p. 4).

Letter, Challis to Airy, 3 November 1846, RGON, McA 33:8.

Sampson , op. cit. (ref. 82), 96.

Airy , “Account” (ref. 25, 1847), 398.

Glaisher J. , “Biographical notice”, preface to SP, p. xviii.

Adams's text was twice published in 1847, first as The nautical almanac and astronomical ephemeris for the year 1851 (London, 1847), appendix: “On the perturbations of Uranus”, 265–93; then, Adams , “An explanation” (ref. 48), reprinted in SP, chap. 2. In December 1846 a brief report appeared: “An explanation of the observed irregularities in the motion of Uranus”, MNRAS, vii/9 (1846), 149–52.

Challis , “First report” (ref. 76), SP.

COA 32, plus a copy of these results exists in AM as EIII 14 (found by Sampson in 1901).

Craig Waff and William Sheehan, summer 2004.

Rawlins , “Conspiracy” (ref. 89), 132.

Turner , Astronomical discovery (ref. 27), 65.

Dreyer Turner , History (ref. 82), 96.

Challis , “A report” (ref. 76, 1846), p. li.

*197. Le Verrier's comments on Uranus's radius vector: op. cit. (ref. 61), 438.

Letter, Airy to Sedgwick, 8 December 1846, RGON; McA, 34.17.3.

From an unsigned review of Dio (which had published the text of Airy's 8 December letter in its June 1999 issue) in the British Society for History of Mathematics newsletter, Spring 2000, 30–31, presumably by the late Fauvel John , its editor.

Grosser's book cited the first letter of this correspondence on 3 December, from Sedgwick about how “I must myself chime in with the pack of grumblers”, and then blithely affirmed that such criticism “had almost no effect on Airy”: Grosser , Discovery (ref. 20), 137. Grosser ignored all of the irate letters sent by Airy responding to Sedgwick's complaints: On 4 (two sent), 8 and 10 December! Published in 1962, Grosser's research was conducted prior to the Neptune file's disappearance (mid-1960s), but he shows no sign of having perused it. It was not even cited in his manuscript sources. He did use the St John's College archives at Cambridge, however, and transcripts of five out of these seven Airy-Sedgwick letters were contained in the MacAlister collection there, including Airy's 8 December letter. Scholars have, for whatever reason, found these manuscripts less than fully accessible, prior to their computer indexing, which was completed in 1999. (The present writer obtained Adams's March 1846 diary-fragment, alluded to earlier, merely by asking for it, though it had never previously been cited.) Airy's 8 December letter returned from Chile in the same year as its copy became accessible in St John's College archive retrieval system.

Chapman , “Private research” (ref. 15), 126; Chapman , “The story” (ref. 12), 44. The Astronomer Royal's journal (ref. 52), 27 October 1845, “very serious charge of incest”; 14 February 1846, “presumed wilful murder”; 13 May 1846, “acquittal” (!).

Airy , Autobiography (ref. 69), 181.

Letter, Sheepshanks to Challis, 20 November 1846, COA 24; I am grateful to the archivist, Godfrey Waller, for assistance in reading this and other letters.

de Morgan Sophie , Memoir (ref. 177), 134.

Letter, Herschel to Sheepshanks, 17 December 1846, RS:HS 25.B2.26c, 16.49.

Editorial, “The new planet”, The Athenaeum, 997 (5 December 1846), 1245.

Letter, William Airy to Airy, 9 December 1846, RGON. Airy's reply alluded to “the sort of connivance amongst educated persons which produces rank fibs”. Airy to W. Airy, 11 December 1846, RGON.

Letter, Herschel to Sheepshanks, 25 December 1846, marked “confidential”, RS:HS 16:52, 25. B2.29C.

Letter, C. Babbage to RAS Council: RAS Letters, 12 March 1847.

Letter, C. Babbage to The Times, 12 March 1846.

They were somewhat prevented by the inclusion of this “missing star” in “Harding's Maps” and also the Berlin Star-Map Hour 14: Adams to Airy, 28 April 1847, RGON, McA 34.2.

Letter, Maury to Mason, 8 February 1847, National Archives, Washington, RG78:1, 2, 198–201; “The new planet”, The sidereal messenger, i/14 (June 1847), 107–8.

Preface to the Histoire celeste, p. 6, quoted in Sears Walker's letter of 20 May 1847 to The National Intelligencer, 22 May 1848, 3.

Rawlins , op. cit. (ref. 89), 130.

Adams J. C. , “Corrected elements of Neptune”, MNRAS, vii/13 (March 1847), 244–5.

Letter, Adams to Airy, 28 April 1847, RGON, McA 34:2.

Letter, Sheepshanks to Adams, 13 March 1847, JCL 13.38.3: “Airy [at the RAS's March meeting] will have it that the observations are not sufficient to determine the orbit.”.

This perplexing issue was finally resolved in the 1990 paper by Lai et al. (ref. 48), see our Appendix III.

Hubbell Smith , “Neptune in America” (ref. 44), 269.

Sears Walker , “To the Editors”, letter dated 1 June 1847 to The National Intelligencer, 5 June 1847, 1, col. 6.

Letters, Herschel to Adams, 18 January 1847, JCL 9:15.3; Herschel to Fitten, 20 February 1847, RS:HS 25.7.5.

“It may seem strange”, pondered Sears Walker (ref. 220), “that Lassell should have seen with his Newtonian reflector of only two feet aperture a satellite which has eluded the searching eyes of the astronomers of Pulkova, Cambridge, England, Cambridge, New England, and Cincinnati, with their great refractors”. This was due, he explained, to Lassell's use in his telescope of a Fraunhofer prism instead of a plane mirror.

A series of letters by Lassell to The Times published on 9 July, 4 August and 24 September 1847 concerned the existence and period of Neptune's satellite.

Letter, Le Verrier to Herschel, 17 July 1848, RS:HS 11.200.

Also in the Weekly Supplement to the Liverpool Mercury, 11 December 1846.

Cf. Rawlins , “Adams' role in the discovery was actually nil” (ref. 89), 115.

Letter, Challis to The Guardian, 4 November 1846, 437, RGON.

Letter, Struve to Challis, 23 January 1847, COA, V.

Brewster , Researches (ref. 117), 237 and 244.

Ibid., 224.

Ibid., 233.

Letter, Charles Babbage to The Times, “The planet Neptune and the Royal Astronomical Society's medal”, 15 March 1847, 5.

*233. Editorial, The Athenaeum, 1014 (3 April 1847), 390 (quoting from Biot's paper “Sur la planète nouvelle découverte …”, in Journal des savants, February 1847, 71–85, p. 84).

Letter, Airy G. B. to The Athenaeum, 1012 (20 March 1847), 309.

Letter, Adams J. C. to parents, 29 May 1847: AM/332, McA 35.3.2.

Rawlins D. , Dio, ii/3 (1992), 125.

Airy , “Account” (ref. 25); Moore , Neptune (ref. 10), 94.

An apocryphal story appeared, to the effect that in 1845 that Airy had shown the vital document to the amateur astronomer William Dawes, who was impressed enough to write about it to William Lassell, who then intended to search for Neptune but unfortunately lost the letter. The story has been dismissed by Moore ( Moore , Neptune (ref. 10), 25; the incident is placed in August 1846 by Baum Sheehan , Search (ref. 37), 279, n. 64); however, it may serve to show the public need for some corroboration of the British tale, which cannot in fact be found.

Moore , Neptune (ref. 10), 104.

Ellis William , “The discovery of Neptune”, The observatory, xxviii (1905), 181–5, p. 184.

Smart , “Adams” (ref. 16), 68.

RGO Archives, RGO 6/40; Smith Robert , “Greenwich in the nineteenth century”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxii (1991), 5–20, p. 16.

Herschel , Outlines (ref. 94), 512, used the correct value of 19.18 AU; Adams's manuscripts give no value for this parameter.

Herschel , Outlines (ref. 94), 512; Grant , History (ref. 59), 617.

Rawlins D. , Dio, ii/3 (1992), 142.

Herschel , Outlines (ref. 94), 508.

Biot J. B. , “Sur la planète nouvellement découverte par M.Le Verrier”, Journal des savants, February 1847, 83, gave the same values.

Adams , “Explanation” (ref. 48), 432.

See, e.g., Brown E. W. , “On a criterion for the prediction of an unknown planet”, MNRAS, xcii (1932), 80–97, fitting a curve that ignored the pre-1750 data.

Lai , “Perturbation” (ref. 48), 950, figs 5 and 7.

VSOP98 planetary ephemeris from the Bureau des Longitudes, obtained by David Harper.

Grant , History (ref. 59), 598.

See, e.g., Littlewood , Mathematician's miscellany (ref. 75).