Le Verrier, Urbain

[person]

French astronomer, born in Saint-Lô, (1811-1877). He worked primarily on celestial mechanics and, like John Couch Adams, predicted the existence of Neptune based on perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. He also, incorrectly, predicted the existence of a planet inside the orbit of Mercury, which he named Vulcan, based on perturbations in Mercury's orbit.