Morton Grosser reconstructs one of the great episodes in nineteenth-century astronomy: the prediction and subsequent observation of Neptune, a planet effectively found first in mathematics and only afterwards in the sky.

Beginning with anomalies in the orbit of Uranus, the book follows the parallel work of John Couch Adams in Britain and Urbain Le Verrier in France, both of whom calculated that an unknown planet must be exerting gravitational influence beyond Uranus.

It is an amazing “discovery” that as it exists only as theory, calculation, observation, correspondence, institutional prestige and national rivalry, everyone starts to begin claiming pieces of it. Grosser traces the mathematics and astronomy clearly while also showing the human machinery around them: missed opportunities, priority disputes, academic networks and the weird moment when an invisible object could be located on paper before anyone had seen it through a telescope. 

Dover Publications, New York, 1979. Dover edition; unabridged republication of the 1962 Harvard University Press edition, with a new preface by the author. Paperback. Moderate rubbing, creasing and shelf wear to covers; page edges lightly aged. Internally clean and firmly bound. Good condition.