We are pleased to offer for auction the first edition of the collected papers of the British mathematician and astronomer John Couch Adams. The first volume contains his previously published writings; the second contains those left in manuscript, including the substance of his lectures on the Lunar Theory. We were able to locate several copies of this two-volume work for sale on the Internet, ranging in price from $250 to $950.
Adams is most famous for predicting the existence and position of Neptune, using only mathematics. The calculations were made to explain discrepancies with Uranus's orbit and the laws of Kepler and Newton. At the same time, but unknown to each other, the same calculations were made by Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier would assist Galle in locating the planet (September 1846); which was found within 1° of its predicted location, a point in Aquarius. (There was, and to some extent still is, some controversy over the apportionment of credit for the discovery.)
Although Adams's researches on Neptune were those which attracted widest notice, the work he subsequently performed in relation to gravitational astronomy and terrestrial magnetism was not less remarkable. Several of his most striking contributions to knowledge originated in the discovery of errors or fallacies in the work of his great predecessors in astronomy. Thus in 1852 he published new and accurate tables of the moon's parallax, which superseded J. K. Burckhardt's, and supplied corrections to the theories of M. C. T. Damoiseau, G. A. A. Plana and P. G. D. de Pontécoulant. In the following year his memoir on the secular acceleration of the moon's mean motion partially invalidated Laplace's famous explanation, which had held its place unchallenged for sixty years. At first, Leverrier, Plana and other foreign astronomers controverted Adams's result; but its soundness was ultimately established, and its fundamental importance to this branch of celestial theory has only developed further with time. For these researches the Royal Astronomical Society awarded him its gold medal in 1866.
The great meteor shower of 1866 turned his attention to the Leonids, whose probable path and period had already been discussed by Professor H. A. Newton. Using a powerful and elaborate analysis, Adams ascertained that this cluster of meteors, which belongs to the solar system, traverses an elongated ellipse in 33 and 1/4 years, and is subject to definite perturbations from the larger planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. These results were published in 1867. Ten years later, when Mr. G. W. Hill of Washington expounded a new and beautiful method for dealing with the problem of the lunar motions, Adams briefly announced his own unpublished work in the same field, which, following a parallel course had confirmed and supplemented Hill's. In 1874-76 he was president of the Royal Astronomical Society for the second time, when it fell to him to present the gold medal of the year to Leverrier. The determination of the constants in Carl Friedrich Gauss's theory of terrestrial magnetism occupied him at intervals for over forty years. The calculations involved great labor, and were not published during his lifetime. They were edited by his brother, Professor W. Grylls Adams, and appear in the second volume of the collected Scientific Papers. Numerical computation of this kind might almost be described as his pastime. The value of the constant known as Euler's, and the Bernoullian numbers up to the 62nd, he worked out to an unimagined degree of accuracy. For Newton and his writings he had a boundless admiration; many of his papers, indeed, bear the cast of Newton's thought. He labored for many years at the task of arranging and cataloguing the great collection of Newton's unpublished mathematical writings, presented in 1872 to the university by Lord Portsmouth, and wrote the account of them issued in a volume by the University Press in 1888. The post of astronomer-royal was offered him in 1881, but he preferred to pursue his peaceful course of teaching and research in Cambridge.
Adams was Lowndean Professor at the University of Cambridge for thirty-three years from 1859 to his death. A crater on the Moon is jointly named after him. Neptune's outermost known ring and the asteroid 1996 Adams are also named after him. The Adams Prize, presented by the University of Cambridge, commemorates his prediction of the position of Neptune. CONDITION & DETAILS
4to; 11.75 by 9.25 inches. liv, [4]. 501 pages; xxxii, 646 pages.
ILLUSTRATIONS: Portrait frontispiece plus six folding magnetic maps/charts overall in very good condition. The folding maps/charts are much too large to scan in their entirety—we have included partial images.
BINDING: Original cloth with gilt title on spine. Spines are faded and spine tips are bumped. The front boards of both volumes show some light staining/fading. The rear inner hinge of Volume II is just starting to pull. Corners are bumped. Overall, the binding is still in very good condition.
INTERIOR: Some very light foxing to title page of Volume II and endpapers, but overall bright and clean and in very good plus to near fine condition.
This important collection of the scientific papers of John Couch Adams would make a valuable addition to many collections.
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