XXXV 



SIR NORMAN LOCKYER 



1836- 1920 



Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, horn at Rugby, England, May 17, 

 i8j6, entered the War Office in i8f,y. Through his own exertions 

 he educated himself in science and was one of the first to suggest 

 the hypothesis that the earth and other spheres were the result of the 

 aggregation of meteorites. He was also the first to apply the spectro- 

 scope to the corona of the sun, revealing the chemical composition 

 of solar prominences as chiefly hydrogen, calcium, and helium. He 

 died at Sidmouth, Devonshire, August 16, 1920. 



THE CHEMISTRY OF THE STARS * 



The importance of practical work, the educational value of the seek- 

 ing after truth by experiment and observation on the part of even 

 young students, are now generally recognized. That battle has been 

 fought and won. But there is a tendency in the official direction of 

 seats of learning to consider what is known to be useful, because it is 

 used, in the first place. The fact that the unknown, that is, the 

 unstudied, is the mine from which all scientific knowledge with its 

 million applications has been won is too often forgotten. 



Bacon, who was the first to point out the importance of experiment 

 in the physical sciences, and who predicted the applications to which I 

 have referred, warns us that ''lucifera experimenta non fructifera 

 quaerenda'' ; and surely we should highly prize those results which 

 enlarge the domain of human thought and help us to understand 

 the mechanism of the wonderful universe in which our -lot is cast, 

 as well as those which add to the comfort and the convenience of 

 our lives. 



It would be also easy to show by many instances how researches, 



* From an address delivered at the University of Birmingham (1900). 



360 



