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This medal has been minted in France commemorate the French mathematician, the father of the meteorology, Urbain Jean Joseph Le VERRIER, 1811 – 1877. 

 

This medal has been designed by the French medalist A. DUBOIS. 

 

Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier; (11 March 1811 – 23 September 1877) was a French mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for his part in the discovery of Neptune.

To Le Verrier is due the organization of the meteorological service for France, especially the weather warnings for seaports, by which today the weather for the following twenty-four hours can be announced with much probability, a matter of especial importance for agriculture and shipping.

 

av. The portrait of Le Verrier

rv. The symbolic motive

 

diameter – 59 mm (2¼“)

weight – 79.30 gr, (2.80 oz)

metal – bronze, mint patina 

 

Early years

Le Verrier was born at Saint-Lô, Manche, France, and studied at École Polytechnique. Following a brief period studying chemistry under Gay-Lussac, he switched to astronomy, particularly celestial mechanics, and accepted a job at the Paris Observatory. He spent most of his professional life, and eventually became that institution's Director, from 1854 to 1970 and again from 1873 to 1877.

In 1846, Le Verrier became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1855, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Le Verrier's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

Career

Discovery of Neptune

Le Verrier's most famous achievement is his prediction of the existence of the then unknown planet Neptune, using only mathematics and astronomical observations of the known planet Uranus. Encouraged by physicist Arago, Director of the Paris Observatory, Le Verrier was intensely engaged for months in complex calculations to explain small but systematic discrepancies between Uranus's observed orbit and the one predicted from the laws of gravity of Newton. At the same time, but unknown to Le Verrier, similar calculations were made by John Couch Adams in England. Le Verrier announced his final predicted position for Uranus's unseen perturbing planet publicly to the French Academy on 31 August 1846, two days before Adams's final solution, was privately mailed to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Le Verrier transmitted his own prediction by 18 September letter to Johann Galle of the Berlin Observatory. The letter arrived five days later, and the planet was found with the Berlin Fraunhofer refractor that same evening, 23 September 1846, by Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest within 1° of the predicted location near the boundary between Capricorn and Aquarius.

There was, and to an extent still is, controversy over the apportionment of credit for the discovery. There is no ambiguity to the discovery claims of Le Verrier, Galle, and d'Arrest. Adams's work was begun earlier than Le Verrier's but was finished later and was unrelated to the actual discovery. Not even the briefest account of Adams's predicted orbital elements was published until more than a month after Berlin's visual confirmation. But Adams himself made full public acknowledgement of Le Verrier's priority and credit (not forgetting to mention the role of Galle) when he gave his paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in November 1846:

I mention these dates merely to show that my results were arrived at independently, and previously to the publication of those of M. Le Verrier, and not with the intention of interfering with his just claims to the honours of the discovery ; for there is no doubt that his researches were first published to the world, and led to the actual discovery of the planet by Dr. Galle, so that the facts stated above cannot detract, in the slightest degree, from the credit due to M. Le Verrier.

Precession of Mercury

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. He suggested, among possible explanations, that another planet (or perhaps, instead, a series of smaller 'corpuscules') might exist in an orbit even closer to the Sun than that of Mercury, to account for this perturbation. (Other explanations considered included a slight oblateness of the Sun.) The success of the search for Neptune based on its perturbations of the orbit of Uranus led astronomers to place some faith in this possible explanation, and the hypothetical planet was even named Vulcan. However, no such planet was ever found, and the anomalous precession was eventually explained by general relativity theory.

Later life

Le Verrier had a wife and children. He died in Paris, France and was buried in the Cimetière Montparnasse. A large stone celestial globe sits over his grave. He will be remembered by the phrase attributed to Arago: "the man who discovered a planet with the point of his pen."

Honours

 

An astronomer and director of the observatory at Paris, born at Saint Lô, the ancient Briodurum later called Saint-Laudifanum, in north-western France, 11 May, 1811; died at Paris, 25 September, 1877. From 1831 the talented youth studied at the Ecole Polytechnique with such success that at the end of his course he was appointed an instructor there. While connected with the school he showed a strong predilection for mathematical studies, above all for such problems as Laplace had so skilfully treated in the "Mécanique céleste". Le Verrier soon received an appointment in the government administration of tobaccos; later he became a professor at the Collège Stanislas at Paris, and finally, in 1646, he was appointed professor of celestial mechanics in the faculty of sciences at the University of Paris. As early as 1839 he published a calculation of the variations of the planetary orbits for the period of time from the year 100,000 B.C. to the year 100,000 A.D., in which he proved by figures the stability of the solar system, which Laplace had only indicated. His calculation of the transit of Mercury of 1845 and of the orbit of Faye's comet demonstrated his ability in that province in which he was soon to gain an almost undreamed-of triumph from the discovery, by means of theoretical calculations, of the planet Neptune. The variations observed in Uranus, up to then the most distant planet known, led him to look for the cause of the disturbance outside of its orbit. His calculations enabled him to specify the very spot in the heavens where the body causing the perturbations in question was to be sought, so that the astronomer Galle of Berlin was able by the aid of his specifications to find the new planet at once upon looking for it, 23 September, 1846. In this way Le Verrier gave the most striking confirmation of the theory of gravitation propounded by Newton. He now became a member of the Academy of Sciences, in 1852 was made a senator, and after Arago's death (1853) was appointed director of the Paris Observatory, a position he held with a short interruption (1870-73) until his death. Under his skilful and prudent administration the observatory made important progress both as to equipment in instruments and, more particularly, as regards preeminent scientific achievements of which Le Verrier was the inspiration. He was the founder of the International Meteorological Institute and of the Association Scientifique de France, being the permanent president of the latter. He also gave careful attention to the geodetic work which was intended to give the most complete presentation possible of the configuration of the earth. The instruments of precision with which, in order to attain this end, he equipped the observers were remarkably complete.

His most important work, however, was the construction of tables representing the movements of the sun, moon, and planets: "Tables du Soleil" (1858); "Tablesde Mercure" (1859); "Tables de Vénus" (1861); "Tables de Mars" (1861); "Tables de Jupiter" (1876); "Tables de Saturne" (1876); "Théorie d'Uranus" (1876); "Théorie de Neptune" (1876); "Tables d'Uranus" (1877). All these publications were preceded by theoretical investigations: "Théorie du mouvement apparent du Soleil" (1858); "Théoriede Mercure" (1859); "Théorie de Vénus" (1861); "Théorie de Mars" (1861), etc. Considerations similar to those which led to the discovery of the planet Neptune caused Le Verrier to infer the existence of a planet between Mercury and the sun. But far greater difficulties both were and are here connected with actual discovery than was the case with Neptune. However, Le Verrier on this occasion also showed his masterly skill in handling the various problems of the reciprocal perturbations of the planets and other heavenly bodies, as is shown in his writings on the subject: "Formules propres à simplifier le calcul des perturbations" (1876); "Variations séculaires des orbites" (1876), etc.

With all his erudition Le Verrier was a zealous adherent and true son of the Catholic Church; even as deputy of the Assembly he openly acknowledged and defended his Catholic faith before all the world. He was also a ready speaker, one in no way discomposed by the attacks of opponents, for he knew how by profound and logical statements to convince his hearers quickly. When dying he said in the words of the aged Simeon: "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, in pace". Those who spoke at the funeral of this remarkable man could truthfully assert that the study of the star-worlds stimulated in him the living belief of the Christian to new fervour. Even in the sessions of the Academy he made no concealment of his faith nor of his childlike dependence on the Catholic Church. When, on 5 June, 1876, he presented to the Academy his completed tables for Jupiter, the result of thirty-five years of toil, he emphasized particularly the fact that only the thought of the great Creator of the universe had kept him from flagging, and had maintained his enthusiasm for his task. He also on this occasion spoke strongly, like his colleague Dumas, against the materialistic and sceptical tendencies of so many scholars. To Le Verrier is due the organization of the meteorological service for France, especially the weather warnings for seaports, by which today the weather for the following twenty-four hours can be announced with much probability, a matter of especial importance for agriculture and shipping. The "Annales de l'Observatoirede Paris", published during the administration of Le Verrier, consist of thirteen volumes of theoretical treatises and forty-seven volumes of observations (1800-1876). At the time of his death he was making plans for equipping the observatory with a large new telescope, and it may be that the stimulating influence exerted in this direction contributed not a little to the result that everywhere, particularly in North America, generous-minded patrons appeared who, each in his own land, gave the money necessary to obtain larger instruments. On 27 June, 1889, a statue of the distinguished savant which cost nearly 32,000 francs ($6400), was erected by subscription in front of the observatory where he had laboured for so many years.