Description:
This 2004 article explores the "story of mathematical sleuthing and telescopic detection of the planet that [French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph] Le Verrier named Neptune ... [and] the controversy set off when, soon after ... the discovery, it emerged that a young and little-known English mathematician, John Couch Adams, had independently tackled the same problem and deduced much the same position -- before Le Verrier had." Includes a related sidebar. From Scientific American. |