William James Stewart Lockyer
M.A., Ph.D., F.R.A.S,
Director of the Norman Lockyer Observatory,
1920 to 1936.
William James Stewart Lockyer, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.A.S, son of the late Sir Norman Lockyer, the great astronomer and astrophysicist, and Director of the Norman Lockyer Observatory at Salcombe Hill, died suddenly on 15 July 1936. He collapsed while walking down the drive leading to the house of his step-mother, Lady Lockyer, at Salcombe Hill. Just two years earlier, 9 July 1934, his sister, Miss Winifred Lucas Lockyer, who was closely associated with him in his work, and had, like him, been a member of the Devonshire Association, passed away. Her obituary appeared in the 1935 Transactions.
Major Lockyer joined the Association in 1920 and was a Vice-President at our Sidmouth Meeting of 1935. He was intimately known to many of our members, by whom, as well as by those who may have first met him when we visited the Observatory on June 26 of last year, his geniality and eagerness to explain in simple terms the complicated nature of his astronomical research work will long be recalled with gratitude and appreciation.
He was born on 3 January 1868. and Sir Norman Lockyer's fifth son.
He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, at Cheltenham College, at the Royal College of Science. South Kensington, at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was MA, and at Gottingen University, of which he was Ph.D. In view of the environment in which he was brought up, and the interest which he showed in his early years in his father's work, it caused no surprise when he adopted a similar career, and began immediately to make his mark. He was chosen when in his early twenties to be a member of a Government expedition to observe the total solar eclipse in Lapland in 1896, and he visited in a similar capacity India in 1898, Spain in 1900, and Majorca in 1905. In 1911, he was selected to be Chief of the Government Expedition to the Tonga Islands. Other eclipses observed by him included France (1912), Scotland (1921). England (1927), and Canada (1932). Lockyer was a member of the International Astronomical Union, and was honorary lecturer in astronomy at the University College of the South West, Exeter. During the War he served as a lieutenant-commander, R.N.V.R., attached to the R.N.A.S., and as a major in the R.A.F.
Before coming to Sidmouth in 1920 on the death of his father, Dr Lockyer was chief assistant at the Solar Physics Observatory, where his father was a director. One of his chief occupations at the Norman Lockyer Observatory was a close study of the spectra of the stars. Photographs of the spectra are taken by a prismatic telescopic cameras, and a complete filing system is kept. This observatory was the only institution in the country where this branch of astronomy was so closely followed.
He published numerous papers which were communicated to the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as A Discussion of Australian Meteorolgy, Southern Hemisphere Surface Air Circulation and a Handbook to the Norman Lockyer Observatory.
In 1921 he married Kate Irene, widow of Mr. William Shaw Wright and daughter of Mr. Alfred Talbot. of Southend - on Sea, who survived him. 82