Agnes Mary Clerke

“ Kerry, and Greenwich, engaged his strenuous attention. He was consulted about the launch of the Great Eastern, the laying of the Atlantic cable, Babbage's calculating machine, the chimes of Westminster clock, and the smoky chimneys of Westminster Palace. A paper on suspension bridges, contributed in 1867 to the Institution of Civil Engineers, was honoured with the Telford medal; and he delivered in 1869 a set of lectures on magnetism in the university of Cambridge, besides at sundry times numerous discourses to the general public. ”

“ The development of his genius for mathematics determined his parents to afford him a university career, and in October 1839 he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, as a sizar. He graduated in 1843 as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, and became shortly afterwards a fellow and tutor of his college.
At the age of twenty-two Adams, after a thorough study of the irregularities in the motion of the planet Uranus, perceived that they were due to the presence of an exterior planet, the existence of which was not yet recognised. ”

“ A trip to Dublin in 1827 in quest of the vacant post of astronomer royal in Ireland led to no result; but on 6 Feb. 1828 he succeeded Robert Woodhouse [q. v.] as Plumian professor of astronomy and director of the Cambridge observatory. His income was now augmented to 500l. a year, and thus provided for, he succeeded in inducing Richarda Smith to marry him on 24 March 1830. At the observatory he introduced an improved system of meridian observations, afterwards continued at Greenwich and partially adopted abroad, and set the example of thoroughly reducing before publishing them. ”

“ A paper embodying the same results, and containing, as Challis said, 'the earliest evidence of the complete solution of an inverse problem of perturbations,' was deposited by Adams at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, on 21 Oct. 1845, after two fruitless attempts to obtain an interview with Airy. Seven months later, the French astronomer Leverrier announced a conclusion similar to Adams's, and in consequence a search for the missing planet was begun by Challis on 29 July 1840. The new planet, which was christened 'Neptune,' was however, discovered at Berlin by the astronomer Galle on 23 Sept. ”

“ GRANT, ROBERT (1814–1892) , astronomer, was born on 17 June 1814 at Grantown-on-Spey, Morayshire, where his father was engaged in trade. An illness of six years having interrupted his education, he taught himself, on his recovery at the age of nineteen, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and mathematics. After some brief study at King's College, Aberdeen, he entered in 1841 his brother's counting-house in London, and there set about collecting materials for a history of astronomy. ”

“ The Leonid meteors of 1866 and 1868, the Andromeda of 1872 and 1885, and the ingress of Venus at the transit of 1882 were observed by him, and formed the subjects of communications to the Royal Astronomical Society. ”

“ Adams refused knighthood in 1847, but the Adams prize, awarded bi-annually for the best essay in astronomy, mathematics, or physics, was founded in 1848, at the university of Cambridge, to commemorate his 'deductive discovery ' of Neptune. ”

“ He, however, successfully traced the apparitions of Halley's comet back to 11 B.C., was a diligent student of Chinese cometary annals, and computed the orbits of forty-three comets, as well as of many asteroids and binary stars. Numerous communications from him were included in scientific collections, notably in the 'Monthly Notices' and the 'Astronomische Nachrichten,' and his letters to the 'Times' on astronomical occurrences appeared at intervals during forty years. ”

“ Adams refined his methods and improved his results in papers published in the 'Comptes Rendus' for January 1859 and in ' Monthly Notices,' June 1880. The final upshot was to reduce the value for lunar acceleration from 10" to about 6" a century. Other points connected with the lunar theory were treated of by him in separate memoirs presented at intervals to the Royal Astronomical Society. ”

“ In 1898 the number of stations had grown to 3,404, of which 436 were in Scotland and 186 in Ireland, and they were manned by an army of over three thousand volunteer observers. This unique organisation was kept by Symons under close personal supervision, and the upshot was the accumulation of a mass of data of standard value, unmatched in any other country. ”

“ They had no children. He bequeathed his residuary estate to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for defraying the expenses of printing his spectroscopic manuscripts, and of sending out occasional expeditions for spectroscopic research at high mountain stations. ”

“ Year after year he criticised the Senate House papers and the Smith's Prize papers very severely, and conducted an interesting and acrimonious private correspondence with Professor Cayley on the same subject.' A very important feature of his investigations was their thoroughness. 'He was never satisfied with leaving a result as a barren mathematical expression. He would reduce it, if possible, to a practical and numerical form, at any cost of labour. ... ”

“ There, in the course of nine years, he discovered ten asteroids, two comets, a remarkable variable nebula in Taurus (Monthly Notices, xxiv. 65) , and several variable stars, including the temporary apparition of May 1848. Accompanying William Rutter Dawes [q. v.] to Sweden for the total eclipse of 28 July 1851, he made some interesting observations on the 'rose-coloured flames' (Memoirs Royal Astron. Society, xxi. 82) , and in 1853 succeeded William Samuel Stratford [q. v.] ”

“ The only available part of its equipment was a six-inch transit-circle by Ertel, and with it Grant made a long series of meridian observations, the results of which were embodied in 'A Catalogue of 6415 Stars for the Epoch 1870,' published at Glasgow in 1883. ”

“ He effectively promoted the study of telluric absorption (Monthly Notices, xxxix. 38) , and brought the ‘rain-band’ into use for weather prediction (Nature, xii. 231, xiv. 9; Journal Scottish Meteor. Society, v. 84) . A map of the solar spectrum constructed by him at Lisbon in 1877-8 (Edin. Phil. Trans. xxix. 285) received the Makdougall-Brisbane prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh ”

“ London, 1867. 2. ‘On the Antiquity of Man,’ Edinburgh, 1868 (awarded the Keith prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh) . 3. ‘Madeira Spectroscopic,’ Edinburgh, 1882. One hundred entries under his name occur in the Royal Society's ‘Catalogue of Scientific Papers.’
[Times, 24 Feb. 1900; Observatory, xxiii. 145,184; Notice by Dr. Copeland in Astronomische Nachrichten, No. 3636, and Popular Astronomy, 1900, p. 384; Nature, 14 June 1900; A. S. Herschel on Smyth's Work in Spectroscopy; Men of the Time, 14th edit.; André et Rayet's l'Astronomie Pratique, ii. 12.] ”