Urbain le verrier biography

(b. SaintLô, France, 11 March 1811; d. Paris France, 23 September 1877),

astronomy, celestial mechanics, meteorology.

Le Verrier, whose family came from Normandy, attended secondary school in his native city and then in Caen.

The family’s finances were modest; and his father, an estate manager, sold his house in order to send Le Verrier to Paris to prepare for the École Polytechnique. Admitted in 1831, he graduated as élève-ingénieur of the state tobacco company and for two years studied at the specialized school of tobacco manufacture.

Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier was a French astronomer and mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics and is best known for predicting the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics.

He then resigned to pursue chemical research under Gay-Lussac.

In 1837 Le Verrier married the daughter of his former mathematics professor. He gave private lessons to support himself and applied for the position of répétiteur de chimie at the École Polytechnique.

Having already published two well-received memoirs on combinations of phosphorus, he was accepted— as répétiteur d’astronomie.

Le Verrier was