James Challis
James Challis (December 12th 1803 - December 3rd 1882) is a Astronome and member of the British Clergé . It is born with Braintree in the Essex and dies in Cambridge.
Challis is Professor plumien of astronomy and philosophy experimental and directing of the Observatoire of Cambridge during 46 years, of 1836 to its death. James Challis became member of Royal Society the June 9th 1848.
In 1846, John Herschel succeeded in persuading it to join research eighth planet of the Solar system. The mathematician John Couch Adams had predicted the position of a planet then unknown to explain certain irregularities of the orbit of Uranus. Adams fails to promote its ideas and there was only little enthusiasm to carry out a systematic research based on its calculations until the intervention of Herschel. Challis begins its research, somewhat unwillingly, in July 1846, ignoramus that the French mathematician Urbain the Glassmaker had made the same prediction independently of work of Adams. The German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle confirms finally calculations of the Glassmaker the first the September 23rd. The planet is named Neptune. It appears rather quickly in the notes of Challis which it had observed Neptune twice the previous month, failing however to correctly identify it like the required object.
The project of Calculation distributed (Distributed.net), at the beginning project of the University of Cambridge, is named in the honor of Challis as well as a lunar crater.
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