3-34. Norman Lockyer

Joseph Norman Lockyer (1836–1920) was an astronomer, and founder and editor of the British science journal Nature. An avid amateur astronomer, in 1868 Lockyer noticed a prominent line in the solar spectrum, that he identified with a new element he named helium. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1869, and Correspondent of the Paris Academy of Science in 1873 (astronomy section). In 1885 Lockyer was named to a new chair in astronomical physics at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, where he became Director of the Solar Physics Observatory in 1890. On Lockyer’s life and work see Meadows (2008), the DSB (Dingle 1973), and Wilkins (1994, 2004).

The exchange of letters between Poincaré and Lockyer concerns several subjects. In the first letter of the exchange, dating from January 1892, Lockyer asks Poincaré to verify the accuracy of his wife Winifred’s translation of the latter’s essay on the foundations of non-Euclidean geometry. During Poincaré’s career, three of his essays were translated into English for publication in Nature,11endnote: 1 Poincaré 1892a, 1894, 1898. along with three letters to the editor, and one letter to A.A. Michelson, all published in the original French.22endnote: 2 Poincaré 1892b, 1892c, 1892d, 1899. All four letters are annotated in Walter (2007); see (§§ 2-55-1, 2-55-3, 2-55-5, 2-41-1).

Time-stamp: "28.05.2020 17:23"

Notes

Références

  • H. Dingle (1973) Lockyer, Joseph Norman. See Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 8: Jonathon Homer Lane–Pierre Joseph Macquer, Gillispie, pp. 440–443. Cited by: 3-34. Norman Lockyer.
  • C. C. Gillispie (Ed.) (1973) Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 8: Jonathon Homer Lane–Pierre Joseph Macquer. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. Cited by: H. Dingle (1973).
  • A. J. Meadows (2008) Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer. Macmillan, London. Cited by: 3-34. Norman Lockyer.
  • H. Poincaré (1892a) Non-Euclidian geometry. Nature 45, pp. 404–407. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • H. Poincaré (1892b) Poincaré’s ‘Thermodynamics’. Nature 45, pp. 414–415. link1 Cited by: endnote 2.
  • H. Poincaré (1892c) Poincaré’s ‘Thermodynamics’. Nature 45, pp. 485. link1 Cited by: endnote 2.
  • H. Poincaré (1892d) Poincaré’s Thermodynamics. Nature 46, pp. 76. link1 Cited by: endnote 2.
  • H. Poincaré (1894) Poincaré on Maxwell and Hertz. Nature 50 (1279), pp. 8–11. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • H. Poincaré (1898) On the stability of the solar system. Nature 58 (1495), pp. 183–185. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • H. Poincaré (1899) Fourier’s series (letter to A.A. Michelson). Nature 60, pp. 52. link1 Cited by: endnote 2.
  • S. A. Walter (Ed.) (2007) La correspondance d’Henri Poincaré, Volume 2: La correspondance entre Henri Poincaré et les physiciens, chimistes et ingénieurs. Birkhäuser, Basel. link1, link2 Cited by: endnote 2.
  • G. A. Wilkins (1994) Sir Norman Lockyer’s contributions to science. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 35, pp. 51–57. link1 Cited by: 3-34. Norman Lockyer.
  • G. A. Wilkins (2004) The archives of the Norman Lockyer Observatory. Journal of Astronomical Data 10, pp. 153–162. link1 Cited by: 3-34. Norman Lockyer.