Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer

Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer , 1836-1920, English astronomer, educated on the Continent. One of the first to make a spectroscopic examination of the sun and stars, he devised (1868), independently of P. J. C. Janssen, a method of observing solar prominences with the spectroscope in daylight. In the same year he discovered the element helium in the sun and applied the name chromosphere to the layer, or envelope, of gas around the sun. He was elected to fellowship in the Royal Society (1869) and served as professor of astronomical physics of the newly founded Royal College of Science and director of the Solar Physics Observatory (1890-1913). Between 1870 and 1905 he headed eight government expeditions to observe total eclipses of the sun. He was knighted in 1897. His works include Studies in Spectrum Analysis (1872), Contributions to Solar Physics (1874), The Chemistry of the Sun (1887), and The Sun's Place in Nature (1897).

Bibliography: See biography by A. J. Meadows (1972).

Lockyer, Norman( Joseph Lockyer) (1836–1920)Englishscientist and solar physicist. He was the first to study sunspots spectroscopically, finding Doppler shifts caused by convection currents in the Sun's gases. In 1868, independently of P. J. C.Janssen, he observed the spectra of solar prominences and developed a spectrohelioscope. Janssen found a new line in the solar spectrum, which Lockyer attributed to a hitherto unknown element. He named it helium (hēlios is Greek for ‘Sun’); it was discovered in the Earth's atmosphere in 1895. Lockyer also studied archaeoastronomical sites such as Stonehenge, and founded and edited the science journal Nature.