About Urbain Le Verrier
Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (French: [yʁbɛ̃ ʒɑ̃ ʒozɛf lə vɛʁje]; 11 March 1811 – 23 September 1877) was a French astronomer and mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known 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 Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton. Le Verrier sent the coordinates to Johann Gottfried Galle in Berlin, asking him to verify. Galle found Neptune the same night he received Le Verrier's letter, within 1° of the predicted position. The discovery of Neptune is widely regarded as a dramatic validation of celestial mechanics, and is one of the most remarkable moments of 19th-century science. Le Verrier's first work in astronomy was presented 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). In 1859, Le Verrier was the first to report that the slow precession of Mercury's orbit around the Sun could not be completely explained by Newtonian mechanics and perturbations by the known planets. In 1846 Le Verrier became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1855 was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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