Joseph norman lockyer biography of michael

English scientist and astronomer (–)

Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (17 May &#; 16 August ) was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal Nature.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Biography

Lockyer was born in Rugby, Warwickshire.

His early introduction to science was through his father, who was a pioneer of the electric telegraph. After a conventional schooling supplemented by travel in Switzerland and France, he worked for some years as a civil servant in the British War Office.^[9] He settled in Wimbledon, South London after marrying Winifred James, who helped translate at least four French scientific works into English.^[10] He was a keen amateur astronomer with a particular interest in the Sun.

In he became the world's first professor of astronomical physics at the Royal College of Science, South Kensington, now part of Imperial College. At the college, the Solar Physics Observatory was built for him and here he directed research until ^[11][12]

In the s Lockyer became fascinated by electromagnetic spectroscopy as an analytical tool for determining the composition of heavenly bodies.

He conducted his research from his new home in West Hampstead, with a 6+1&#;4-inch telescope which he had already used in Wimbledon.^[1]

In a prominent yellow line was observed in a spectrum taken near the edge of the Sun. Its wavelength was about &#;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 helium after the Greek word 'Helios' meaning 'sun'. An observation of the new yellow line had been made earlier by Janssen at the 18 August solar eclipse^[13] , 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. In his work on the identification of helium, Lockyer collaborated with the noted chemist Edward Frankland.^[14]

To facilitate the transmission of ideas between scientific disciplines, Lockyer established the general science journal Nature in ^[15] He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in ^[16] He remained its editor until shortly before his death.

Lockyer led eight expeditions to observe solar eclipses for example in to Sicily, to India and to India.^[1]

Lockyer is among the pioneers of archaeoastronomy. Travelling 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 to sunrise at midsummer he calculated the construction of the monument to have taken place in BC. Radiocarbon dating in gave a date of 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.

Joseph norman lockyer biography of michael jordan A star, beginning as a meteoritic swarm, would rise in temperature as it condensed, until a stage was reached at which the mass, then completely vaporized, would lose heat by radiation at a rate equal to its generation by condensation; thereafter it would cool down toward its final state as a cold solid body. Sir Frederick Grant Banting. In a prominent yellow line was observed in a spectrum taken near the edge of the Sun. Lockyer felt himself free to adopt either explanation, and to allow liberally for errors of measurement, according to the needs of his hypothesis, and it is not surprising that the conclusions he reached failed to convince the more critical of his contemporaries.

Lockyer's first wife Winifred née James died in They had six sons and two daughters in all. In , Lockyer started a second marriage, to suffragist Thomazine Mary Brodhurst (née Browne).^[17] After his retirement in , Lockyer established an observatory near his home in Salcombe Regis near Sidmouth, Devon.

Originally known as the Hill Observatory, the site was renamed the Norman Lockyer Observatory 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, but is now owned by the East Devon District Council, and run by the Norman Lockyer Observatory Society.

The Norman Lockyer Chair in Astrophysics at the University of Exeter is currently held by Professor Tim Naylor, who is the member of the Astrophysics group there which studies star formation and extrasolar planets. Naylor was the lead scientist for the eSTAR Project.

Lockyer died at his home in Salcombe Regis in , and was buried there in the churchyard of St Peter and St Mary.^[18][19]

Publications

• Norman Lockyer ().

  Elementary Lessons in Astronomy. Macmillan and co. (–94)

• Questions on Astronomy ()
• Norman Lockyer (). Contributions to Solar Physics. Macmillan and co. ()
• Joseph Norman Lockyer (). The Spectroscope and Its Applications. Macmillan and Co. p.&#;1. ()
• Norman Lockyer; George Mitchell Seabroke ().

  Stargazing. Macmillan and co. ()

• Norman Lockyer (). Studies in Spectrum Analysis. C. K. Paul. ()
• Report to the Committee on Solar Physics on the Basic Lines Common to Spots and Prominences ()
• Joseph Norman Lockyer; Norman Lockyer (). The Movements of the Earth.

  Macmillan and co. ()

• Norman Lockyer (). The Chemistry of the Sun. Macmillan and co. ()
• Norman Lockyer (). The Meteoritic Hypothesis.
  Joseph norman lockyer biography of michael jackson The observation depended on the possibility of using a dispersion large enough to weaken the spectrum of the diffused sunlight in the atmosphere sufficiently to make visible the bright lines of the prominence spectrum. More cautious archaeologists, while evincing considerable skepticism concerning the fundamental idea, were deterred also by the fact that the erosion of centuries, or even millennia, would have changed the visible horizon too drastically for the method to have much value; but Lockyer exhibited the same fertility of imagination in overcoming such difficulties as he had shown in connection with celestial spectra, and he built up an imposing system of dates associated with a few stars which he regarded as having had special religious significance. His father, Joseph Hooley Lockyer, was a surgeon-apothecary with broad scientific interests, and his mother, Anne Norman, was a daughter of Edward Norman, the squire of Cosford, Warwickshire. Sir Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine.

  Macmillan. ()

• Penrose, F.C., (communicated by Joseph Norman Lockyer), The Orientation of Greek Temples, Nature, v, n, 11 May , pp.&#;42–43
• Norman Lockyer (). The Dawn of Astronomy. Cassell. ()
• Norman Lockyer; William Rutherford (). The Rules of Golf: Being the St.

  Andrews Rules for the Game. Macmillan & Co.

• Norman Lockyer (). The Sun's Place in Nature. The Macmillan Company. ()
• Recent and Coming Eclipses ()
• Norman Lockyer (). Inorganic Evolution as Studied by Spectrum Analysis. Macmillan and Co., Limited. p.&#; ()
• Norman Lockyer ().

  On the Influence of Brain Power on History. Macmillan and Co., Limited. ()

• Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered (; second edition, )
• Norman Lockyer; Joseph Norman Lockyer (). Education and National Progress. Macmillan and co. ()
• Norman Lockyer; Joseph Norman Lockyer ().

  Surveying for Archaeologists. Macmillan and Co., Limited. ()

• Norman Lockyer; Winifred Lucas Lockyer (). Tennyson, as a Student and Poet of Nature. Macmillan. ()

Honours and awards

References

Further reading

External links