The Eagle a Magazine supported by Members of E. Johnson, Trinity Street Printed by Metcalfe & Co. Limited, Rose Crescent 1892 Volume XVII Number XCVII JOHN COUCH ADAMS. Y the death, on January 21, 1892, of Professor greatest man of science of whom the College can boast has been removed from our roll. His fame as an Astronomer, who had extended by a thousand millions of miles the known limits of the solar system, reflected glory on the College within whose walls the great achievement was planned and carried out. His earnest devotion to duty, his simplicity, his perfect selflessness, were to all who knew his life in Cambridge a perpetual lesson, more eloquent than speech. From the time of his first great discovery, scientific honours were showered upon him, but they left him as they found him-modest, gentle, and sincere. Controversies raged for a time around his name, national and scientific rivalries were stirred up concerning his work and its reception, but he took no part in them, and would generously have yielded to others' claims more than his greatest contemporaries would allow to be just. With a single mind for pure knowledge he pursued his studies, here bringing a whole chaos into cosmic order, there vindicating the supremacy of a natural law beyond the imagined limits of its operation: now tracing and abolishing errors that had crept into the calculations of the acknowledged masters of his craft, and now giving time and strength to resolving the self-made difficulties of a mere beginner: and all the time with so little thought of winning recognition or applause that much of his most perfect work remained for long, or still remains, VOL. XVII. R |