20 Facts About James Challis

James Challis FRS was an English clergyman, physicist and astronomer.

James Challis is best remembered for his missed opportunity to discover the planet Neptune in 1846.

James Challis was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1826 and was ordained in 1830.

James Challis held the benefice of Papworth Everard, Cambridgeshire from the college until 1852.

In 1831 James Challis married Sarah Copsey, nee Chandler, a widow, and consequently resigned his Trinity fellowship.

For over a decade, in correspondence and publications, James Challis repeatedly disagreed with Stokes's conclusions from his research.

James Challis was referee for Thomson and for Stokes in their respective applications for chairs at the University of Glasgow, and for Maxwell at Aberdeen.

James Challis succeeded George Biddell Airy at the observatory and gradually improved the instrumentation and accuracy of observations.

James Challis published over 60 scientific papers recording other observations of comets and asteroids.

James Challis invented the meteoroscope and the transit-reducer.

James Challis published twelve volumes of Astronomical Observations Made at the Observatory of Cambridge.

James Challis was succeeded by Adams though he maintained his professorship until his death.

In 1846, Airy finally persuaded a skeptical James Challis to join in the search for an eighth planet in the Solar System.

James Challis finally began his, somewhat reluctant, search in July 1846, unaware that Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier had independently made an identical prediction.

James Challis was full of remorse but blamed his neglect on the pressing business of catching up on the backlog of astronomical observations from the observatory.

James Challis worked in hydrodynamics and in optics where he supported the wave theory of light and advanced the theory of a luminiferous ether as a medium for its propagation.

James Challis took issue with Charles Wycliffe Goodwin's views on Genesis expressed in Essays and Reviews.

James Challis saw Genesis as an "antecedent plan" for creation, rather than a literal chronology, and argued that the biblical account could be reconciled with the geological record.

James Challis went on to interpret the word "law", as used in a spiritual sense by Saint Paul, in the sense of scientific law.

James Challis died in Cambridge and was buried beside his wife in Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge.