diff --git a/test/test_optim.py b/test/test_optim.py
index f05b219a42f..76ff0e6c405 100644
--- a/test/test_optim.py
+++ b/test/test_optim.py
@@ -292,6 +292,8 @@ class TestOptim(TestCase):
                 self._build_params_dict(weight, bias, lr=1e-2),
                 lr=1e-3, amsgrad=True)
         )
+        with self.assertRaisesRegexp(ValueError, "Invalid beta parameter at index 0: 1.0"):
+            optim.Adam(None, lr=1e-2, betas=(1.0, 0.0))
 
     def test_sparse_adam(self):
         self._test_rosenbrock_sparse(
diff --git a/torch/optim/adam.py b/torch/optim/adam.py
index 490fe8b31e3..6d401e52fe7 100644
--- a/torch/optim/adam.py
+++ b/torch/optim/adam.py
@@ -28,6 +28,10 @@ class Adam(Optimizer):
 
     def __init__(self, params, lr=1e-3, betas=(0.9, 0.999), eps=1e-8,
                  weight_decay=0, amsgrad=False):
+        if not 0.0 <= betas[0] < 1.0:
+            raise ValueError("Invalid beta parameter at index 0: {}".format(betas[0]))
+        if not 0.0 <= betas[1] < 1.0:
+            raise ValueError("Invalid beta parameter at index 1: {}".format(betas[1]))
         defaults = dict(lr=lr, betas=betas, eps=eps,
                         weight_decay=weight_decay, amsgrad=amsgrad)
         super(Adam, self).__init__(params, defaults)