Adams, John Couch (1819-1892), a British astronomer, one of the discoverers of the planet Neptune. From his study of the planet Uranus, Adams was able to calculate mathematically the existence of Neptune in 1845. Urbain Leverrier made the same discovery independently in 1846. Adams also determined the orbit of the Leonid meteors (swarms of meteors that appear each November) and studied the earth's magnetism and the moon's motions. Adams was professor of astronomy and geometry at Cambridge University, 1858-92.