Urbain Le Verrier
He predicted the existence and location of Neptune based on perturbations in Uranus's orbit.
Most quoted
"To gaze at the night sky is to confront our own mortality, to realize the brevity of our time against the backdrop of eternity, and yet, to find a strange comfort in that vastness."
— from Observational Diaries
"Death is the ultimate unknown, yet in the grand cosmic scheme, it is but a transition, a return to the elements from which we were forged, to be scattered among the stars."
— from Private Journals
"Direct your telescope to the ecliptic in the constellation of Aquarius, at a longitude of about 326 degrees, and you will find within a degree of that place a new planet."
— from Letter to Johann Galle, 1846
All quotes by Urbain Le Verrier (375)
The infinite complexity of the heavens is reducible to a few elegant equations.
Work with perseverance, and the truth will reveal itself.
The discovery of Neptune has opened a new era for celestial mechanics.
Doubt is the beginning of investigation.
The universe does not conceal its secrets from those who know how to interrogate it with mathematics.
I have often been alone in my ideas, but never in my faith in calculation.
The glory of a discovery is shared with all who contributed to the edifice of science.
Observe, calculate, verify—this is the triple method of astronomy.
There is no greater intellectual joy than to see a prediction fulfilled by the heavens.
The mind's eye sees farther than the telescope.
All my work is but a continuation of the great labors of Laplace.
The perturbations of Uranus were the key that unlocked the door to Neptune.
In the vastness of space, a single calculation error is a voyage into nothingness.
Science advances by successive approximations to the truth.
Let others look; I shall compute.
Contemporaries of Urbain Le Verrier
Other Astronomys born within 50 years of Urbain Le Verrier (1811–1877).