England, and U. J. J. Leverrier, the leading French
mathematician of his generation.

Adams's calculation was first begun and first completed.
But it had one radical defect--it was the work
of a young and untried man. So it found lodgment in a
pigeon-hole of the desk of England's Astronomer Royal,
and an opportunity was lost which English astronomers
have never ceased to mourn. Had the search
been made, an actual planet would have been seen
shining there, close to the spot where the pencil of the
mathematician had placed its hypothetical counterpart.
But the search was not made, and while the
prophecy of Adams gathered dust in that regrettable
pigeon-hole, Leverrier's calculation was coming on, his
tentative results meeting full encouragement from
Arago and other French savants. At last the laborious
calculations proved satisfactory, and, confident of
the result, Leverrier sent to the Berlin observatory,
requesting that search be made for the disturber of
Uranus in a particular spot of the heavens. Dr. Galle
received the request September 23, 1846. That very
night he turned his telescope to the indicated region,
and there, within a single degree of the suggested spot,
he saw a seeming star, invisible to the unaided eye,
which proved to be the long-sought planet, henceforth
to be known as Neptune. To the average mind, which
finds something altogether mystifying about abstract
mathematics, this was a feat savoring of the miraculous.