The Eagle 1892 (Lent)
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- @) :::t '$ �� � '" ... � a- .e! ... � 0- !e� .... lii. 0 � ... �= � o 'tS s:l � � 'd' 'tS S W � ::I-- � C" = lII. ... ... C" d'< Cl lA � ... - � ... �Cf'I ... 00 � ...0 =� �a- ... ... N) tl:? lA ... '$ ... 0 � � er<:3 ... ,t;" pt lII. � 0 .... � \ � -I CO�TENTS PAGE Frontispiece John Couch Adams 121 The Subscription for the ensuing year is fixed at 4/6; it includes Nos 96, 97 and 98. Subscribers who pay One Guinea in advance will A J ohnian in Kurdistan - 138 be supplied with the Magazine for five years, dating from the Telm in which the payment is made. To the Old Year- - 140 llEPI l:T EcJ>ANO'Y' Resident subscribers are requested to pay their Subscriptions to 141 Mr E. Johnson, Bookseller, Trinity Street: cheques and postal orders llEPI A'Y'PAl: should be made payable to The Treasurer of the Eagle Magazine. 141 Notes from the College Records (colltillued) - 142 Subscribers are requested to leave their addresses with Mr E. Johnson, and to give not�ce of any change; and also of any conections in the Silence is Golden in December. 156 printed list of Subscribers issued Two Sonnets date 157 Contributions for the next number should be sent in at an early to one of the Editors (Dr Donald MacAlister, Mr G. C. M. Smith, The Humour of Homer - 158 J. A. Cameron, F. W. Carnegy, W. McDougall, L. Horton-Smith). Quo Sal? 193 N.B.-Contr,ibutors of anonymous articles or letters will please send their names to one of the Editors who need not communicate them further. A Lamp Exlingt;ished 194 Arms, forming the Omnia Explomte Large-paper copies of the plate of the College 198 frontispiece to No 89, may be obtained by Subscribers at the reduoed pnce IOd on application td Mr 1I1erry at the Cullege Buttery. Idem Graece Redditum - of - 198 Obituary: M1 E. Johnso1t will be glad to hear /1'01" any Subscriber who has a a.. pZicate copy of No 84 to dispose of. Thomas Roberts M.A. F.G.S. 199 James Alexander Stewart 200 The INDEX to the EAGLE (vols i-xv) is now ready, Robert Peirson M.A. 201 and may be had from Mr Merry at the College Buttery, Sir James ,\Villiam Redh ouse LITT.D. 2 03 price half-a-crown. Correspondence - 20B Our Chronicle - 209 T!le Library 231 jOHN COUCH ADAMS. �y the death, on January 21, 1892, of Professor �ls1 Adams, Honorary Fellow, the name of the greatest man of science of whom the College � �boa st has been removed from our roll. His fame can as an Astronomer, who had extended by a thousand millions of miles the known limits of the solar system, reflected glory on the College within whose walls the great achievement was planned and carried out. His earnest devotion to duty, his simplicity, his perfect selflessness, were to all who knew his life in Cambridge a perpetual lesson, more eloquent than speech. From the time of his first great discovery, scientific honours were showered upon him, but they left him as they found him-'-modest, gentle, and sincere. Contro versies raged fo r a time around his name, national and scientific rivalries were stirred up concerning his work and its reception, but he took no part in them, and would generously have yielded to others' claims more than his greatest contemporaries would allow to be just. With a single mind for pure knowledge �e pursued his studies, here bringing a whole chaos Into cosmic order, there vindicating the supremacy of a natural law beyond the imagined limits of its, pe � ration: now tracing and abolishing errors that ad crept into the calculations of the acknov'l1edged &/,l'l masters h' cra t, an d now g1V111g' , time, an d 0 f f st e IS 111: ,ngt :0 resolving the self-made difficulties of h a e l begmner: and all the time with so little thought of , rno�:l11ning recognition or applause that much of his perfect work remained fo r long, or still remains, VOL. XVII. R /.{ma::J1/, Pu,blt.:flud qy Hacnutlan & c.0, 122 John Couclt Adams. John Couch Ada ms. clopaedz'a, which he met with in the library unpublished. To such a man the nation e Cy J. eS Devonport Mechanics' Institute. In the same sake may raise a monument in the national V 'f the e across a copy of Vince's Fluxzons, which but his true memorial is elsewhere-in the starry �brary he cam 11 . the hearts which he inspired with his first mtro d'uctlOn to t h e h'Ig h er math ematlCS. and in wa 5 . affection. In October 1839 he entered at St John's College, During his undergraduate course he was We give elsewhere an account of the steps Cambridge. the first man of his year in the College have been taken to record his fame on the walls invariably Wef'tminster Abbey ; here, with his portrait Examinations, and in the Mathematical Tripos of 1843 by the kindness of Messrs Macmillan, we are en he obtained the position of Senior Wrangler. He was to print an account of his career, written by hi soon after elected to a Fellowship, and became one Qf for a biographical work but not hitherto published the mathematical tutors of his college. length, which Mrs Adams has very generously Mr Adams's attention was firstcalled to the existence us. No other pen could have written in so subdued of unexplained disturbances in the motion of the planet strain of what he was and what he did ; of this Uranus by reading Mr Airy's valuable Report on the reader will constantly have to remind himself. recent progress of Astronomy which appeared in the first the unique interest of the piece has led us volume of the Reports of the Brt'tzsh Assocz·atz'on. Ac it to an ampler account by any other hand. cording to a memorandum dated early in July 1841, he had then fo rmed a design of investigating, as soon as possible after taking his degree, "the irregularities JOHN COUCH ADAMS M.A. F.R.S. &c. was in the motion of Uranus which are yet unaccounted for, on June 8, 1819, at Lidcot, a fa rm occupied in order to find whether they may be attributed to the actio his father in the parish of Laneast, near Laun n of an undiscovered planet beyond it, and, if poss Cornwall. At a very early age he shewed ible, thence to determine the elements of its orbit, great aptitude for calculation, and while he which would probably lead to its discovery." Acco still attending the village school he taught rdingly in 1843 he attempted a first rough solu tion of the rudiments of Algebra by the help of F the problem on the assumption that the orbit Was a circle Young Algebrazst's Compant'on, a copy of which he with a radius equal to twice the mean dis tance of with in his schoolmaster's scanty library. Wh-en Uranus from the Sun. The result showed that good general agreement between theory and observa- twelve years of age he was sent to a school at :. IOn mig port, kept by the Rev John Couch Grylls,. a first ht be obtained. In order to make the data mployed of his mother. � more complete Mr Adams applied, through rofe ssor He remained under Mr Grylls' tuition fo r a Challis, to the Astronomer Royal, Mr Airy, ho in F!=b many years, first at Devonport and afterwards at Sal � ruary 1844 kindly sent him the results of all le Greenwic and Landulph, and received the usual school training . h observations of Uranus. He was thus Indu ed to k C undertake a new solution of the problem, now Classics and Mathematics. He developed a great t ln into account the most important terms depending for Astronomy, and read with avidity all the books oa g the first that subject to which he could obtain access. In s� power of the eccentricity of the orbit of the PPOsed ticular he read nearly all the astronomical articles disturbing planet, but retaining the same John Couch .Jolzn Couc/z dams. 125 124 Ada1JZs. A . assumption as before with respect to the mean the place thus assigned by M. Le Verrier to the dis In September 1845 Mr Adams communicated to planet was the same, within one degree, as that rbing fessor Challis the values which he had obtained for tu Mr Adams's calculations, which had been com iven by mass, heliocentric longitude, and elements of the !unicated to the Astronomer Royal seven months before. of the assumed planet. The same results, This coincidence left no doubt in Mr Airy's mind of the corrected, he communicated before the middle reality and general exactness of the prediction of the following month to the Astronomer Royal. place, and he urged Professor Challis to under planet's communications were made in the hope that a s the search for it with the Northumberland telescope take for the planet would have been made either at the Cambridge Observatory. Professor Challis did of bridge or Greenwich, but unfortunately this was not hesitate to undertake the search, although he ex done in consequence of the pressure of other work. pected that it would prove a long and laborious one. November 5, 1845, the Astronomer Royal wrote His plan was to examine a zodiacal zone having its' Mr Adams enquiring whether his theory would centre in the ecliptic at 325° of longitude, and extending for the observed error of the Radius Vector of 15° of longitude in each direction from the central point, but although the question might easily have and from 5° north to 5° south latitude.