The Catholic encyclopedia (Volume 9); an international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline and history of the Catholic Church . ministration of tobaccos; later he became aprofessor at the College Stanislas at Paris, and finally,in 1646, he was appointed professor of celestial me-chanics in the faculty of sciences at the University ofParis. As early as 1839 he published a calculation ofthe variations of the planetary orbits for the period oftime from the year 100,000 b. c. to the year 100,000A. D., in which he proved by figures the stability of thesolar system, which Lap
The Catholic encyclopedia (Volume 9); an international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline and history of the Catholic Church . ministration of tobaccos; later he became aprofessor at the College Stanislas at Paris, and finally,in 1646, he was appointed professor of celestial me-chanics in the faculty of sciences at the University ofParis. As early as 1839 he published a calculation ofthe variations of the planetary orbits for the period oftime from the year 100,000 b. c. to the year 100,000A. D., in which he proved by figures the stability of thesolar system, which Laplace had only indicated. Hiscalculation of the transit of Mercury of 1845 and of theorbit of Fayes comet demonstrated his ability in thatprovince in which he was soon to gain an almost un-dreamed-of triumph from the discovery, by means oftheoretical calculations, of the planet Neptune. Thevariations observed in Uranus, up to then the mostdistant planet known, led him to look for the cause ofthe disturbance outside of its orbit. His calculationsenabled him to specify the very spot in the heavenswhere the body causing the perturbations in question. Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier LEVITES 206 LEVITES was td lif sought, so that the astronomer Galle of Ber-lin was aljle by the aid of his specifications to find thenew planet at once upon looking for it, 23 September,Is40. In this way Le \errier gave the most striliingconfirmation of the theory of gravitation propoundedby Xewton. He now Iiecame a member of the Acad-emy of Sciences, in was made a senator, and afterAragos death (:j) was appointed director of theParis ()l)ser\atory, a position he held with a short in-terruption (ls70-7:j) until his death. Under his skil-ful and prudent administration the observatory madeimportant progress both as to equipment in instru-ments and, more particularly, as regards pre-eminentscientific achievements of which Le Verrier was the in-spiration. He was the founder of the InternationalMeteor
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