A Stargazey Cornishman
In the early 19th century it was thought that there were just 6 planets in our solar system and that was including our own. Finding a new planet in the night sky was considered in many ways more luck than judgement. Yet men such as Sir John Herschel, Sir Isaac Newton and the Cornishman John Couch Adams spent their careers searching the night skies for new discoveries.
We humans have always been fascinated with what lies beyond our own small blue planet. In Cornwall we are lucky to have plenty of opportunities for star gazing with our clear night skies. The enormous satellite disks at Goonhilly Earth Station, which is currently pioneering research into deep space communication, have become part of our Cornish landscape. In recent years I have watched with fascination how far we have been able reach into furthest reaches of our solar system. The stunningly vivid images of the surface of Mars sent back just this year by NASA’s HiRISE satellite makes it seem all the more improbable that it is only a mere 86 years since Pluto was discovered.
John Couch Adams is a name barely recognizable to most people but it could be argued that his discoveries have helped us to advance little by little to where we are today – sending probes into deep space.
Adams was born in Lidcott in North Cornwall in 1819 and from a very early age he amazed everyone with his extraordinary mathematical abilities. To the astonishment of his parents and teachers he was able to do long and complicated calculations in his head without the use of pen and paper. The farmer’s son also showed a natural aptitude in algebra and Greek but in 1835 after seeing the spectacular sight of Halley’s Comet shooting across the clear Cornish skies Adams developed a passion for astronomy.
It became his obsession and by sheer luck a small inheritance of his mother’s allowed him to go to university. While still an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1841, Adams decided to investigate “the irregularities of the motion of Uranus…in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it”.
Adams theorized that Uranus’ irregular orbit could be due to the presence of an as yet undiscovered planet in the vicinity - Neptune. As was his habit all of his detailed calculations to prove his theory were worked out in his head and of course these calculations only predicted the existence of Neptune, Adams wasn’t actually able to see the planet.
Despite his conviction that a new planet existed Adams was a notoriously unassuming man, when asked many of the other students at his university hardly remembered him and those who did described him a neat, quiet fellow in a faded green frock coat. His modest nature meant Adams only shared his findings with his small inner circle of like-minded friends. When at last he did hand in a report on his discoveries to the Cambridge Observatory in September 1845 for some reason it was quietly passed onto the Royal Observatory at Greenwich where it was entirely ignored. Adams let the matter lie.
So when a few months later in 1846 the Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier announced his ‘discovery’ of the possible location of a new planet Adams made little attempt at a counter claim, in fact he is said to have written a paper in which he bashfully congratulated Le Verrier on his success. It was the director of the Cambridge Observatory who reminded the scientific community of Adams’ earlier work and the Royal Observatory had to admit their mistake. As a result both men were eventually given the credit for Neptune’s discovery and Adam’s was characteristically happy to share the accolade with the Frenchman.
He went on to work quietly within the field of astronomy for the rest of his life, making numerous other discoveries mostly in the study of comets and meteors and teaching at Cambridge until his death in 1891. His students remembered him mostly for setting them dastardly maths problems.
Adams gained honorary degrees from Oxford, Dublin, Edinburgh and Bologna and was elected to the Royal Society, the St Petersburg Academy and to The Academy of Sciences. But he was never one to boast of his personal achievements and when he was offered a knighthood in 1847 he turned it down. However there is a crater on the moon named after him which is perhaps a more fitting tribute to this man.
I think Adams is Cornish character who despite perhaps his own wishes shouldn’t be allowed to fade into the background. Because of our long mining heritage there is a saying in Cornwall that if there is a hole anywhere in the world you will find a Cornishman at the bottom of it, I like to think that there is a Cornishman up amongst the stars too.