In September 1845 Adams gave accurate information on the position of the new planet to James Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory. Action was not taken by Cambridge and Urbain Leverrier's later prediction was published before Adams's and led directly to the discovery of Neptune on September 23, 1846 by the Berlin Observatory.
Adams became Regius Professor of Mathematics at St Andrews in 1858 and Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge in 1859. He was named director of the Cambridge Observatory in 1861.
Adams's made many other contributions to astronomy, notably his studies of the Leonid meteor shower (1866), his description of the motion of the Moon which was more accurate than that of Laplace and his study of terrestrial magnetism.
He will be best remembered, however, for his role as the co-discoverer of Neptune.
The portrait you can see above was taken when he was in St Andrews by the pioneer photographer John Adamson.