Joseph norman lockyer biography of christopher

(b.

Joseph norman lockyer biography of christopher

Rugby, England, 17 May 1836; d. Salcombe Regis, England, 16 August 1920)

astrophysics.

Lockyer came from a middle-class family, derived, it was believed, from early Celtic immigrants from France into England.

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. His formal education, at schools in the English Midlands, tended to concentrate on the classics, but the scientific atmosphere at home, supplemented by travel in Switzerland and France, served to broaden his interests and to produce the type of mind that was later to show a marked versatility.

His earliest employment was as a civil servant in the English War Office, which he entered in 1857. He remained there until his striking success as an amateur astronomer led, via a period of temporary service as secretary of the duke of Devonshire’s commission on