Abstract
The year 1868 was one of the best years of Lockyer’s life, and one of the worst. There was a move at the War Office to demote him from his post as the head of the Army Regulation Branch and put him on a lower salary, under the supervision of a first class clerk. Lockyer protested and sought help from his influential friends but in vain. Then his health broke down and he went to Switzerland to recuperate.
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Notes
- 1.
Most of his friends were on the liberal side in politics, but the government was conservative.
- 2.
Tennyson read some of the proof sheets for the book and suggested the English title ‘The Heavens’.
- 3.
Joseph N. Lockyer, Philosophical Transactions, 1869, vol. 159, 425.
- 4.
A. J. Meadows, Science and controversy: A biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass: 1972), 53.
- 5.
Dr. Sharpey, “Notice of an observation of the spectrum of a solar prominence, by Joseph N. Lockyer, Esq., in a letter to the Secretary,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 17 (1868–69), 91–92.
- 6.
Lockyer wrote another article in November 1868 on the details of his observations, in which he sought to dispel any doubt about the independence of his work. He again mentioned the delay in the delivery of the spectroscope, and wrote, “I mention these facts, first to account for my apparent inaction, and secondly in order that the coincidence in time of my results with those obtained by the observers of the recent eclipse may not be misinterpreted.” Then he went to add in the footnote: ‘It is important that I should be allowed further to emphasize this remark, for M. Faye, who was unaware of the date on which my new Spectroscope was received has stated (Comptes Rendus, xvii. (1868), 840) “L’insuccès des tentatives premières de M. Norman Lockyer (il est aisé de s’en rendre compte aujourd’hui) me paraît tenir à ce que ce savant, dans l’impossibilitè où il était alors de prévoir de quelles raies que lumineuses se composerait le spectre des protubérances supposées gazeuses, nie savait sur quelles particularités délicates du spectre si compliqué des régions circumsolaires il devait porter son attention. Cela est si vrai, que c’est seulerent quand il a su, par les observateurs français et anglais de l’élipse , la nature détaillée du spectre des protubérances, qu’il a réussi à trouver en Angleterre les traces de ce spectre dans celui des régions du voisines bord du soleil) ‘I think that the illustrious French astronomer, who has otherwise done me such ample justice, will not object to my pointing out this slight inaccuracy, due entirely to the fact that the first communication of my discovery was incomplete in its statement of the circumstances which attended it. The bright lines as seen in my instrument are so obvious and brilliant that a child could not overlook them.” (Joseph N. Lockyer, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 159 (1869), 426–427).
- 7.
Hervé Faye, Proc Acad. Sci., Vol. 67 (26 October 1868), 840 (see Françoise Launay, Un globe-trotter de la physique céleste—L’astronome Jules Janssen, Coédition Vuibert—Observatoire de Paris : 2008, 59).
- 8.
“Spectroscopic observations of the sun,” Astronomical Register, Vol. 7 (1869), 193.
- 9.
Françoise Launay, ibid, 65.
- 10.
Jules Janssen, “On the spectral study of solar prominences,” Proc. Acad. Sci. Vol. 68, (11-01-1869), 93–95.
- 11.
His letter to Henrietta around the same time had a tone of rivalry with Lockyer though. He wrote on January 16, 1869, that he was working under dry atmospheric conditions that are exceptionally favorable to his research and that he was delighted on that score. ‘I have a superb weather and I am stealing a march over Mr. Lockyer who, at this moment, should be under a screen of fog.’ (Françoise Launay, Ibid, p. 61) Janssen struggled to keep his spirits at this time as he was running out of funds to continue his research. He wrote to the minsiter Duruy and Henrietta also met the minister for more funds. On 30th January, the minister wrote to Dumas: “The results of this mission assume such an importance that it seems to be urgent to authorise M. Janssen to continue the same. I will tell him by telegram to continue his researches and that the necessary funds for the purpose will be made available to him.” (Françoise Launay, Ibid., 64.)
- 12.
S. L. Chapin noted in his article on Janssen that he had a previous experience of dispute in the matter of scientific priority for independent discoveries and inventions. (S. L. Chapin, “P. J. C. Janssen and the advent of the spectroscope into astronomical prominence,” Griffith Observer, Vol. 48 (1984), 2–15.) There was a report in 1862 that one M. Littrow of Vienna had also constructed a spectroscope founded on the same principle as the one made by Janssen. Janssen reacted that it was ‘useless to raise the question of priority in this regard, and that we must be satisfied, M. Littrow and I, if we have given an analyser that can be of some use to science.’
- 13.
S. L. Chapin, Ibid., 9.
- 14.
David Aubin and Charlotte Bigg have discussed this fascinating resemblance, and the parallels in their biographies, in “Neither genius nor context incarnate: Norman Lockyer, Jules Janssen and the astrophysical self,” in The history and poetics of scientific biography, ed. Thomas Söderqvist (Ashgate: Burlington, VT, 2007).
- 15.
Letter from Jules Janssen to N. Lockyer, 28 April 1872; Letter from N. Lockyer to Jules Janssen, 13 May 1872, BIF, Ms 4136–383.
- 16.
J. F. Tennant, “Report on the total eclipse of the sun, August 17-18, 1868,” Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 37 (1869), 44.
- 17.
Warren de la Rue wrote to George Stokes on 23rd November of 1868: ‘It is curious that Huggins should have failed in discovering the ‘red flame’—because he is a very skilful observer:- had he been successful he would have anticipated Janssen and, by so doing, rendered great assistance to the Eclipse observers.’ (Stokes paper, Add MS 7,656.D200, University of Cambridge Library).
- 18.
Joseph N. Lockyer, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 29 (1869), 90–91.
- 19.
B. Stewart, Nature, Vol. 7 (1873), 301.
- 20.
This discovery pushed Lockyer into another controversy, with an old friend, de la Rue, who contested that ‘any luminous layer different from the luminous prominences could neither have escaped me, while observing with the telescope [at the total eclipse of 1860], nor photographic depiction in the Kew heliograph’, in a letter to G. Stokes. Before writing this, de la Rue went to the War Office to meet Lockyer and tried to talk him into withdrawing the announcement. Lockyer offered to show him the chromosphere through his telescope at any point on the solar limb that de la Rue wished. And sensing another controversy, he got a colleague in the office to sign a statement containing the gist of the conversation. Then he studied the photographs of de la Rue from the 1860 eclipse and thought that he could see the chromosphere there. The controversy went away soon later when others confirmed Lockyer’s discovery, and de la Rue and Lockyer remained good friends.
- 21.
Translation by Pierre Amalric, “Jules Janssen (1824–1907): From opthalmology to astronomy,” Documenta Ophthalmologica, Vol. 81 (1992), 41.
- 22.
As quoted in Françoise Launay, Ibid., 62.
- 23.
Each member of the club had his pipe. There was apparently a special clay pipe for Tennyson.
- 24.
J. Plücker and W. Hittorf, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol. 14 (1865), 1–29.
- 25.
These two assistants would both become Fellows of the Royal Society in the time to come. One of them, Alexander Pedler, would come to India and teach chemistry at the Presidency College at Calcutta, where he would help Lockyer’s plans to observe a total solar eclipse in 1875.
- 26.
E. Frankland, Joseph N. Lockyer, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. 38 (1869), 66–67.
- 27.
Joseph N. Lockyer, “The story of helium, Part I,” Nature, Vol. 53 (1896), 321.
- 28.
H. C. Bolton, “Historical notes on the defunct elements,” American Chemist, July 1870, 1.
- 29.
Lockyer came to know about it only when he was requested to write an obituary for Janssen by the Royal Society and when he wrote to Henrietta Janssen about the details of what happened in 1870. Mrs. Janssen replied that Janssen ‘was…exceptionally grateful to the British government, whose esteem and generosity he always appreciated, as well as to you, who took such a large part in the matter….and for a number of years it was not possible for the particular circumstances of his departure to be made known.’ (Françoise Launay, ibid, 73.)
- 30.
Joseph N. Lockyer, Sun’s place in Nature (Macmillan & Co: 1897), 34.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
W. B. Jensen, “Why Helium ends in ‘-ium’,” Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 81 (2004), 944.
- 33.
Joseph N. Lockyer, Contributions to solar physics (Macmillan & Co. :1874), 239. Lockyer dedicated the book to Janssen and Balfour Stewart.
- 34.
A. J. Meadows, Ibid., 73.
- 35.
Lockyer used his influences to get one of Thomas Cooke’s optical instruments included in the exhibition.
- 36.
A. J. Meadows, Ibid., 75.
- 37.
Ibid., 78.
- 38.
Incidentally, Queen Victoria was declared empress of India on January 1, 1877.
- 39.
M. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (Verso, London: 2001), 220.
- 40.
W. B. Carpenter, Presidential adress, Report, British Association for the Advancement of Science (1872), lxxiv.
- 41.
See H. Kragh, “The solar element: a reconsideration of Helium’s early history,” Annals of Science, Vol. 66 (2009), 165.
- 42.
Frank A. J. L. James, “The practical problems of a ‘new’ experimental science: Spectro-chemistry and the search for hitherto unknown chemical elements in Britain 1860–1869,” British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 21 (1988), 193.
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Nath, B.B. (2013). Lockyer and His Cosmic Hieroglyphics. In: The Story of Helium and the Birth of Astrophysics. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5363-5_10
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