Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/116

 96 HISTORY OF THE [1840-50 storm burst, between the rising of the Society in June and its reassembly on November 14. At that meeting, with W. H. Smyth in the Chair, after " John Riddle, Esq., Second Master of the Nautical School, Greenwich Hospital, was balloted for and duly elected a Fellow of the Society," the three most remarkable com- munications were made which the Society can ever expect to receive in one night. The first was Airy 's c ' Account of some circum- stances historically connected with the discovery of the Planet exterior to Uranus." As the Athenceum says, it took the character of a defence of himself by the Astronomer Royal, for not having acted sooner in instituting a search for the planet. The second was Challis's pitiful story, surely no feebler one was ever told. To do it justice, it is candid. No one would dream of doubting its veracity, for what could induce any man to produce a tale of that complexion ? The third paper was Adams's " Explanation of the observed irregularities in the motion of Uranus" Airy knew how to write. When he was a young man at Cam- bridge he made it a practice to purify his style by translating, and retranslating back again, to compare with an original model. His Account consists almost entirely of letters and extracts from documents connected together by a brief and lucid comment. It strikes me as extraordinarily effective in meeting a tangled situation. Again, no one can possibly doubt its facts. But it leaves one completely at a loss to know why he was so ready to ignore Adams and accept Le Verrier. He never answered this. His radius-vector question was little more than a pretext. A year later, when Otto Struve wrote to him, " L'histoire impartiale, dans Pavenir, citera honorablement et a cote de M. Le Verrier le nom de M. Adams, et reconnaitra deux individus qui ont decouvert, Tun independamment de 1'autre, la planete au dela de 1'Uranus," Airy hastened to endorse the judgment. But by that time Adams was securely established. Adams freely admitted himself to blame for not sending Airy an answer to his question, trivial though he regarded it. But Airy never wrote a word that admitted he had himself wronged Adams by his neglect. It is not unfair to him to say that he preferred for himself the obloquy, that he was ready to exalt the mighty in their seats and to put down the humble and meek. Adams's Explanation is also a remarkable paper. Consider what evidence of immaturity and inexperience he had otherwise shown. Partly by his own constitutional incapacity for action, partly because he was unfortunate in his associates, what everyone then acclaimed the greatest glory of the human mind had been his, and had slipped through his hands, into another's. And he is said at the meeting to have behaved like a bashful boy. But the inves-