Discovery of Neptune - Later Analysis

Later Analysis

The conventional wisdom that Neptune's discovery should be "credited to both Adams and Le Verrier" has recently been challenged putting in doubt the accounts of Airy, Challis and Adams in 1846.

In 1999, Adams's correspondence with Airy, which had been lost by the Royal Greenwich Observatory, was rediscovered in Chile among the possessions of astronomer Olin J. Eggen after his death. In an interview in 2003, historian Nicholas Kollerstrom concluded that Adams's claim to Neptune was far weaker than had been suggested, as he had vacillated repeatedly over the planet's exact location, with estimates ranging across 20 degrees of arc. Airy's role as the hidebound superior willfully ignoring the upstart young intellect was, according to Kollerstrom, largely constructed after the planet was found, in order to boost Adams's, and therefore Britain's, credit for the discovery. A later Scientific American article by Sheehan, Kollerstrom and Waff claimed more boldly "The Brits Stole Neptune" and concluded "The achievement was Le Verrier's alone."