Besides those memorable scientific labours with which his attention was so largely engaged, Professor Adams found time for much other study.  He occasionally allowed himself to undertake as a relaxation some pieces of numerical calculation, so tremendously long that we can only look on them with astonishment.  He has calculated certain important mathematical constants accurately to more than two hundred places of decimals.  He was a diligent reader of works on history, geology, and botany, and his arduous labours were often beguiled by novels, of which, like many other great men, he was very fond.  He had also the taste of a collector, and he brought together about eight hundred volumes of early printed works, many of considerable rarity and value.  As to his personal character, I may quote the words of Dr. Glaisher when he says, “Strangers who first met him were invariably struck by his simple and unaffected manner.  He was a delightful companion, always cheerful and genial, showing in society but few traces of his really shy and retiring disposition.  His nature was sympathetic and generous, and in few men have the moral and intellectual qualities been more perfectly balanced.”

In 1863 he married the daughter of Haliday Bruce, Esq., of Dublin and up to the close of his life he lived at the Cambridge Observatory, pursuing his mathematical work and enjoying the society of his friends.

He died, after a long illness, on 21st January, 1892, and was interred in St. Giles’s Cemetery, on the Huntingdon Road, Cambridge.