John Couch Adams was born near Launceston, England, the son of a poor tenant farmer in 1819. Adams was a shy, precocious child whose early knowledge of astronomy was self-taught. In his teens he had constructed his own sundial and spent time studying solar altitudes. In 1839 he entered Cambridge University on a scholarship. Adams was a diligent student, working as a tutor during the academic year and sending his earnings home to his family. Adams had an extraordinary interest in his astronomical studies, and in 1841 he began devoting all his free time to a focused study of the orbit of Uranus.

Since Sir William Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781, astronomers had been puzzled by its irregular orbit and began to consider the possible existence of another planet's gravitational force as the cause of Uranus's orbital fluctuations. By 1843 Adams's diligence paid off as he graduated first in his class in...