Join us for the STEAM Café this month! August’s STEAM talk, “The Discovery of Neptune”, will be presented by Dr. Donald Teets, professor emeritus in the South Dakota Mines Department of Mathematics.

There is a significant overlap between the history of astronomy and the history of mathematics. Many of the most famous mathematicians of the 18th and 19th centuries devoted much of their work to problems in celestial mechanics, the branch of astronomy that studies the motions of planets and other celestial objects. One of the most remarkable achievements resulting from this work was the discovery of Neptune in 1846, brought about by mathematicians John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier. Dr. Donald Teets, professor emeritus in the South Dakota Mines Department of Mathematics, will describe from a non-technical perspective how the work of Adams and Le Verrier led to the discovery of Neptune.