The early astrophysicist Norman Lockyer was both editor of the journal Nature from its creation in 1869 and for the following five decades, and an early practioner of the new astronomy. He frequently used the journal to expound his scientific theories, report on his work and send news home while on expeditions. I look into the particular visual culture of astrophysics developed by Lockyer in Nature, its evolution at a time of rapid development both of the techniques of astrophysical observation and visualization and of the techniques of image reproduction in print. A study of the use and reuse of visual materials in different settings also makes it possible to sketch the circulating economy of Lockyer’s images and the ways in which he put himself forward as a scientist, at a time when he was advocating the State support of research and scientists and helping create the modern scientific journal.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Cited in Martin Kemp, “Noticing Nature,” Nature, 7 May 1998, 393:25–26, p. 25.
Declan Butler, “Leading Plant Biologist found to have committed misconduct: Olivier Voinnet suspended for two years after manipulated images discovered in his work,” Nature News, 10 July 2015, http://www.nature.com/news/leading-plant-biologist-found-to-have-committed-misconduct-1.17958 (accessed 10 July 2015).
See, e.g. James Mussell, Science, Time and Space in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate, 2007). On the theoretical background to this approach see Timothy Lenoir, “Inscription Practices and the Materialities of Communication,” in Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication, edited by Timothy Lenoir (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 1–20. See also in that volume the contributions by Simon Schaffer and Alex Plang, that both focus on astronomical visualizations.
Alex Csiszar, “Seriality and the Search for Order: Scientific Print and its Problems during the Late Nineteenth Century,” History of Science, 2010, 3/4:399–434, p. 399.
Alex Csiszar, “Objectivities in Print,” in Objectivities in Science: New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol. 310, edited by Flavia Padovani, Alan Richardson, and Jonathan Y. Tsou (Cham: Springer, 2015), pp. 145–169.
Richard Yeo, Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge, and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 77.
Ibid., p. 5.
Theodore Porter, “The Fate of Scientific Naturalism from Public Sphere to Professional Exclusivity,” in Victorian Scientific Naturalism, edited by Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), pp. 265–287, p. 277.
Arthur J. Meadows, Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (London et al: Macmillan, 2008) (first edition 1972), pp. 16–27, citation on p. 17.
Charles Morgan, The House of Macmillan (1843–1943) (London: Macmillan and Co., 1943), p. 86. On the acceleration of communication, including of astronomy, through telegraphy see Joshua Nall, News from Mars. Transatlantic Mass Media and the Practice of New Astronomy, 1870–1910, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2013.
Norman Lockyer, “Order or Chaos,” Nature, 13 July 1893, 48:241–242, p. 241.
See, e.g. James Mussell, “Arthur Cowper Ranyard, Knowledge, and the Reproduction of Astronomical Photographs in the Late Nineteenth-Century Press,” British Journal for the History of Science, 2009, 42/3:345–380; Bernard Lightman, “The Visual Theology of Victorian Popularizers of Science,” Isis, 2000, 91:651–680.
Graham Gooday, “ ‘Nature’ in the Laboratory: Domestication and Discipline with the Microscope in the Victorian Life Sciences,” British Journal for the History of Science, 1991, 24/3:307–341.
J.N.L., “Instructions for Observers at the English Government Eclipse Expedition, 1871,” Nature, 26 October 1871, 3:516–518. Meadows, Science and Controversy (cit. note 16), pp. 68–71. On the history of drawing, photographing and printing images of the corona in this period, see Pang, Empire and the Sun (cit. note 25), pp. 83–120.
E.g. J. Norman Lockyer, “On the Recent Solar Eclipse,” Nature, 20 and 27 July 1871, 3:230–233 and 248–251.
A. Brothers, “Photographs of the Eclipse,” Nature, 9 March 1871, 3:369–370.
See David Aubin and Charlotte Bigg, “Neither Genius nor Context Incarnate: Lockyer, Janssen and the Astrophysical Self,” in The Poetics of Biography in Science, Technology and Medicine, edited by Thomas Söderqvist (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 51–70; on Proctor, see Bernard Lightman, “Knowledge confronts Nature: Richard Proctor and the Popular Science Periodicals,” in Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, edited by Louise Henson, Geoffrey Cantor, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes, Sally Shuttleworth, Jonathan Topham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 199–210; Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. pp. 295–352.
James Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) (first published 2000), esp. pp. 9–76.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 256 | 52 | 0 |
Full Text Views | 124 | 7 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 37 | 19 | 0 |
The early astrophysicist Norman Lockyer was both editor of the journal Nature from its creation in 1869 and for the following five decades, and an early practioner of the new astronomy. He frequently used the journal to expound his scientific theories, report on his work and send news home while on expeditions. I look into the particular visual culture of astrophysics developed by Lockyer in Nature, its evolution at a time of rapid development both of the techniques of astrophysical observation and visualization and of the techniques of image reproduction in print. A study of the use and reuse of visual materials in different settings also makes it possible to sketch the circulating economy of Lockyer’s images and the ways in which he put himself forward as a scientist, at a time when he was advocating the State support of research and scientists and helping create the modern scientific journal.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 256 | 52 | 0 |
Full Text Views | 124 | 7 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 37 | 19 | 0 |