Urbain Le Verrier
French astronomer (1811-1877)
- Fame61.0
- Momentum15.0
- Scientists rank#248
Source-basedStable
- Fame61.0
- Momentum15.0
- Scientists rank#248
- Wikipedia4.8K
Lived 1811–1877, aged 66France
FranceSummary
Updated 2026-06-21
He never looked through a telescope to find it. Le Verrier calculated Neptune's position on paper — solving for an unseen planet by the tug it left on Uranus — then mailed the coordinates to Berlin. They found it that night, within a degree.
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Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier was a French astronomer and mathematician who built his career in celestial mechanics, the physics of orbits and gravity. By the 1840s, Uranus wasn't behaving: its path disagreed with what Kepler and Newton predicted. Le Verrier worked backward from the discrepancies, using only math to infer an unseen eighth planet's mass and location. On 23 September 1846, he sent the coordinates to Johann Gottfried Galle in Berlin and asked him to check. Galle found Neptune the same night he opened the letter, within one degree of where Le Verrier said it would be. The event be…
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Historical22.8
Now attention16.9
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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