Lockyer, Sir (Joseph) Norman 1836-1920
English astronomer

Born in Rugby, Warwickshire, he became a clerk at the British War Office to which he remained technically attached (1857-75), devoting as much time as he could spare to science. In 1868 he designed a spectroscope for observing solar prominences outside of a total eclipse and succeeded in doing this independently of Pierre Jules C�sar Janssen, who had used the same principle a few months earlier. In the same year he postulated the existence of an unknown element which he named helium (the 'Sun element'), an element not found on Earth until 1895 by William Ramsay. He also discovered and named the solar chromosphere. In 1875 he became a member of the staff of the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. His research gave rise to unconventional ideas such as his theory of dissociation, whereby atoms were believed to be capable of further subdivision, and his meteoritic hypothesis which postulated the formation of stars out of meteoric material. Among other activities, he took part in eclipse expeditions and made surveys of ancient temples for the purpose of dating them by astronomical methods. The founder (1869) and first editor of the scientific periodical Nature, he was knighted in 1897. His solar physics observatory at South Kensington was transferred to Cambridge University in 1911, but he remained active in a private observatory which he set up in Sidmouth, Devon, until his death.

Bibliography: A J Meadows, Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (1972)