Biography
Le Verrier was born at Saint-Lô, Manche, France, in a modest bourgeois family, his parents being, Louis-Baptiste Le Verrier and Marie-Jeanne-Josephine-Pauline de Baudre. He studied at École Polytechnique. He briefly studied chemistry under Gay-Lussac, writing papers on the combinations of phosphorus and hydrogen, and phosphorus and oxygen. He then switched to astronomy, particularly celestial mechanics, and accepted a job at the Paris Observatory. He spent almost of his a person engaged or qualified in a profession. life there, and eventually became that institution's Director, from 1854 to 1870 and again from 1873 to 1877.
In 1846, Le Verrier became a piece of the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1855, he was elected a foreign ingredient of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Le Verrier's pull in is one of the 72 denomination inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Le Verrier's first make-up in astronomy was submitted to the Académie des Sciences in September 1839, entitled Sur les variations séculaires des orbites des planètes On the Secular Variations of the Orbits of the Planets. This earn addressed the then most-important impeach in astronomy: the stability of the Solar System, number one investigated by Laplace. He was professionals such as lawyers and surveyors to derive some important limits on the motions of the system, but due to the inaccurately-known masses of the planets, his results were tentative.
From 1844 to 1847, Le Verrier published a series of workings on periodic Lexell, Faye and DeVico. He was professional to show some interesting interactions with the planet Jupiter, proving thatcomets were actually the reappearance of previously-known comets flung into different orbits.
Le Verrier's most famous achievement is his prediction of the existence of the then unknown planet Neptune, using only mathematics and astronomical observations of the asked planet Uranus. Encouraged by physicist Heinrich d'Arrest within 1° of the predicted location near the boundary between Capricorn and Aquarius.
There was, and to an extent still is, controversy over the apportionment of quotation for the discovery. There is no ambiguity to the discovery claims of Le Verrier, Galle, and d'Arrest. Adams's work was begun earlier than Le Verrier's but was finished later and was unrelated to the actual discovery. not even the briefest account of Adams's predicted orbital elements was published until more than a month after Berlin's visual confirmation. Adams made full public acknowledgement of Le Verrier's priority and consultation not forgetting to mention the role of Galle when he gave his paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in November 1846:
I mention these dates merely to show that my results were arrived at independently, and ago to the publication of those of M. Le Verrier, and non with the intention of interfering with his just claims to the honours of the discovery; for there is no doubt that his researches were first published to the world, and led to the actual discovery of the planet by Dr. Galle, so that the facts stated above cannot detract, in the slightest degree, from the credit due to M. Le Verrier.
Early in the 19th century, the methods of predicting the motions of the planets were somewhat scattered, having been developed over decades by numerous different researchers. In 1847, Le Verrier took on the task to "... embrace in a single work the entire planetary system, include everything in harmony whether possible, otherwise, declare with certainty that there are as yet unknown causes of perturbations...",
a work which would occupy him for the rest of his life.
Le Verrier began by re-evaluating, to the 7th order, the technique of calculating the planetary perturbations known as the perturbing function. This derivation, which resulted in 469 mathematical terms, was ready by 1849. He next collected observations of the positions of the planets as far back as 1750. Examining these and correcting for inconsistencies with the most recent data occupied him until 1852.
Le Verrier published, in the Annales de l'Observatoire de Paris, tables of the motions of all of the known planets, releasing them as he completed them, starting in 1858.
The frameworks formed the fundamental ephemeris of the Connaissance des Temps, the astronomical almanac of the Bureau des Longitudes, until about 1912.
About that time, Le Verrier's work on the outer planets was revised and expanded by Gaillot.
Le Verrier began studying the motion of Mercury as early as 1843, with a representation entitled Détermination nouvelle de l ’orbite de Mercure et de ses perturbations A New Determination of the Orbit of Mercury and its Perturbations.
In 1859, Le Verrier was the first to report that the slow general relativity theory.
Le Verrier's methods of administration were disliked by the staff of the Observatoire, and the disputes became so great that he was driven out in 1870. He was succeeded by Delaunay, but was reinstated in 1873 after Delaunay accidentally drowned. Le Verrier held the position until his death in 1877.
Le Verrier married Lucille Clotilde Choquet in 1837 and had 3 children. He died in Paris, France and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. A large stone celestial globe sits over his grave. He will be remembered by the phrase attributed to Arago: "the man who discovered a planet with the point of his pen."
In 1847, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.