Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (17 May 1836 – 16 August 1920) was an English scientist and

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

. Along with the French scientist

Pierre Janssen Pierre Jules César Janssen (22 February 1824 – 23 December 1907), usually known as Jules Janssen, was a French astronomer who, along with English scientist Joseph Norman Lockyer, is credited with discovering the gaseous nature of the solar ...

, he is credited with discovering the gas

helium Helium (from ) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, inert gas, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is ...

. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

''.

Biography

Lockyer was born in

Rugby, Warwickshire Rugby is a market town in eastern Warwickshire, England, close to the River Avon, Warwickshire, River Avon. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census, its population was 78,117, making it the List of Warwickshire towns by population, secon ...

. His early introduction to science was through his father, who was a pioneer of the

electric telegraph Electrical telegraphy is Point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point distance communicating via sending electric signals over wire, a system primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecom ...

. After a conventional schooling supplemented by travel in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

and

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, he worked for some years as a

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...

in the British

War Office The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at ...

. He settled in

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * W ...

, South London after marrying Winifred James, who helped translate at least four French scientific works into English. He was a keen

amateur astronomer Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers m ...

with a particular interest in the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

. In 1885 he became the world's first professor of astronomical physics at the

Royal College of Science The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from t ...

, South Kensington, now part of

Imperial College Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a cultural district in South Kensington that included museums ...

. At the college, the Solar Physics Observatory was built for him and here he directed research until 1913. In the 1860s Lockyer became fascinated by

electromagnetic spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectrosc ...

as an analytical tool for determining the composition of heavenly bodies. He conducted his research from his new home in West Hampstead, with a -inch telescope which he had already used in Wimbledon. In 1868 a prominent yellow line was observed in a spectrum taken near the edge of the Sun. Its wavelength was about 588 nm, slightly less than the so-called "D" lines of sodium. The line could not be explained as due to any material known at the time, and so it was suggested by Lockyer, after he had observed it from London, that the yellow line was caused by an unknown solar element. He named this element

after the Greek word ἥλιος (''helios'') meaning 'sun'. An observation of the new yellow line had been made earlier by Janssen at the 18 August 1868 solar eclipse , and because their papers reached the French academy on the same day, he and Lockyer usually are awarded joint credit for helium's discovery. Terrestrial helium was found about 27 years later by the Scottish chemist

William Ramsay Sir William Ramsay (; 2 October 1852 – 23 July 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements ...

. In his work on the identification of helium, Lockyer collaborated with the noted chemist

Edward Frankland Sir Edward Frankland, (18 January 18259 August 1899) was an English chemist. He was one of the originators of organometallic chemistry and introduced the concept of combining power or valence. An expert in water quality and analysis, he was ...

. To facilitate the transmission of ideas between scientific disciplines, Lockyer established the general science journal ''

'' in 1869. He was elected as a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1874. He remained its editor until shortly before his death. Lockyer led eight expeditions to observe solar eclipses for example in 1870 to Sicily, 1871 to India and 1898 to India. Lockyer is among the pioneers of

archaeoastronomy Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultur ...

. Travelling 1890 in Greece he noticed the east–west orientation of many temples, in Egypt he found an orientation of temples to sunrise at midsummer and towards Sirius. Assuming orientation of the Heel-Stone of

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric Megalith, megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, to ...

to sunrise at midsummer he calculated the construction of the monument to have taken place in 1680 BC. Radiocarbon dating in 1952 gave a date of 1800 BC. He also confirmed the alignment of the Parthenon on the rising point of the Pleiades and did extensive work on the solar and stellar alignments of Egyptian temples and their dating, presented in his book The Dawn Of Astronomy. Norman Lockyer Observatory 228

Lockyer's first wife Winifred née James died in 1879. They had six sons and two daughters in all. In 1903, Lockyer started a second marriage, to suffragist Thomazine Mary Brodhurst (née Browne). After his retirement in 1913, Lockyer established an observatory near his home in

Salcombe Regis Salcombe Regis is a coastal village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Sidmouth, in the East Devon district, in the county of Devon, England. Mentioned in the Domesday Book as "a manor called Selcoma" held by Osbern FitzOsbern, bish ...

near

Sidmouth Sidmouth () is a town on the English Channel in Devon, South West England, southeast of Exeter. With a population of 13,258 in 2021, it is a tourist resort and a gateway to the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. A large part of the town has ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

. Originally known as the Hill Observatory, the site was renamed the

Norman Lockyer Observatory The Norman Lockyer Observatory, the Lockyer Technology Centre, and the Planetarium (jointly NLO), is a public observatory, public access Observatory#Optical observatories, optical observatory east of Sidmouth, East Devon in South West England. It ...

after his death and directed by his fifth son William J.S. Lockyer. For a time the observatory was a part of the

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of ...

, but is now owned by the East Devon District Council, and run by the Norman Lockyer Observatory Society. The Norman Lockyer Chair in

Astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...

at the

is currently held by Professor Tim Naylor, who is the member of the Astrophysics group there which studies

star formation Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space—sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or "star-forming regions"—Jeans instability, collapse and form stars. As a branch of astronomy, sta ...

and

extrasolar planets An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first detect ...

. Naylor was the lead scientist for the

eSTAR Project The eSTAR project was a multi-agent system that aimed to implement a heterogeneous network of robotic telescopes for automated observing, and ground-based follow-up to transient events. The project is a joint collaboration between the Astrophysi ...

Lockyer died at his home in Salcombe Regis in 1920, and was buried there in the churchyard of St Peter and St Mary.

Publications

* (1868–94) * ''Questions on Astronomy'' (1870) * (1873) * (1873) * (1878) * (1878) * ''Report to the Committee on Solar Physics on the Basic Lines Common to Spots and Prominences'' (1880) * (1887) * (1887) * (1890) * Penrose, F.C., (communicated by Joseph Norman Lockyer)
''The Orientation of Greek Temples''

, v.48, n.1228, 11 May 1893, pp. 42–43 * (1894) * Norman Lockyer; William Rutherford (1896)
''The Rules of Golf: Being the St. Andrews Rules for the Game''
Macmillan & Co. * (1897)
''Recent and Coming Eclipses''
(1900) * (1900) * (1903)

(1906; second edition, 1909) * (1907) * (1909) * (1910)

Honours and awards

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(1869) *

Rumford Medal The Rumford Medal is an award bestowed by the Royal Society for "outstanding contributions in the field of physics". The award is named in honour of British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who is noted for his works on thermody ...

Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

(1874) * Janssen Medal,

Paris Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific d ...

(1889) *

Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by King George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. Recipients of the Order are usually senior British Armed Forces, military officers or senior Civil Service ...

(1897) * President,

British Association The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chief ...

(1903 – 1904) * The crater Lockyer on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

and the crater Lockyer on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

are both named after him, as is Norman Lockyer Island in Nunavut, Canada.

References

External links

Norman Lockyer Observatory & James Lockyer Planetarium

Archives of the Norman Lockyer Observatory (University of Exeter)

Norman Lockyer Observatory radio station in Sidmouth

Certificate of candidacy for Lockyer's election to the Royal Society

Prof. Tim Naylor, Norman Lockyer Professor of Astrophysics

Astrophysics Group, University of Exeter

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lockyer, Norman 1836 births 1920 deaths People from Rugby, Warwickshire Discoverers of chemical elements Fellows of the Royal Society English science writers Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath 19th-century English astronomers 20th-century English astronomers Helium Spectroscopists Nature (journal) editors International members of the American Philosophical Society

Biography

Publications

Honours and awards

References

Further reading

External links