Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/369

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Lister
D.N.B. 1912–1921

Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1860 and was its president from 1895 to 1900. He was president of the British Association in 1896. In 1880 he was elected on the council of the Royal College of Surgeons and served for the usual period of eight years; he was unwilling to serve for a further period and thus was never president. In 1883 a baronetcy was conferred on him, and in 1897 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lister, of Lyme Regis. In 1902 he was one of the twelve original members of the newly constituted order of merit. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 1907 he received the freedom of the city of London.

Lister married in 1856 Agnes, the eldest daughter of James Syme, the Edinburgh surgeon. She died in 1903. Throughout their married life she took a great part in assisting him in much of his work, the note-books of his experiments being largely written by her. They had no children. In 1908 Lister left 12 Park Crescent, Portland Place, where he had lived ever since he came to London in 1877, and went to Walmer, where he died 10 February 1912. Burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, but he had left instructions to be buried by the side of his wife. The funeral service was held in Westminster Abbey 16 February 1912, and the burial took place at the West Hampstead cemetery.

There are many portraits of Lister. A presentation portrait painted by John Henry Lorimer in 1896 is in the library hall of the university of Edinburgh. Another portrait, by W. W. Ouless, painted in 1897, is at the Royal College of Surgeons, and a replica is in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was painted again by Charles E. Ritchie in 1908. A marble bust, executed by Sir Thomas Brock in 1913, is at the Royal College of Surgeons, and a plaster cast of this is in the National Portrait Gallery. In the same gallery is a wax medallion executed by Mrs. Bernard Jenkin in 1898. There are other medallions at University College, London, and at University College Hospital, and one by Brock is in Westminster Abbey. A memorial bust by Brock has been erected in Portland Place, near the house occupied by Lister, 12 Park Crescent. (See Royal Academy Pictures, 1897, 1913.)

[R. J. Godlee, Lord Lister, 1917; Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. lxxxvi, B, 1912–1913; Lord Lister's Collected Writings, 1909.]

J. R. B.

LITTLE, WILLIAM JOHN KNOX- (1839-1918), divine and preacher. [See Knox-Little.]

LLANDAFF, Viscount (1826-1918), lawyer and politician. [See Matthews, Henry.]

LOCKYER, Sir JOSEPH NORMAN (1836–1920), astronomer, was born at Rugby 17 May 1836, the only son of Joseph Hooley Lockyer, physician, of Rugby, by his wife, Anne, daughter of Edward Norman, of Cosford, Warwickshire. He was educated at private schools and on the Continent, and at the age of twenty-one obtained a clerkship in the War Office. His marked ability gained for him in 1865 the office of editor of the Army Regulations. But he had already acquired, probably from his father, who founded a scientific and literary society in Rugby, a taste for science, especially astronomy. He bought a refracting telescope of 6¼ inches aperture, made by Thomas Cooke [q.v.], and began to study planetary surfaces. His first scientific paper, communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1863, gives a very accurate study of Mars as observed at the opposition of 1862.

In 1866 Lockyer attached a spectroscope to his 6¼ inch equatorial, observed the spectrum of a sun-spot, saw that it contained no bright lines and that certain dark lines were thickened, and thus obtained a decisive answer to the question, then under vigorous discussion, as to the cause of the relative darkness of a sun-spot. This was a pioneer observation in many ways. The actual projection of the sun's image on the slit of the spectroscope, so that the small area of a sun-spot could be isolated for observation, was new; for spectroscopy was in its infancy, and attention had previously been paid chiefly to stars and nebulae. This success was soon followed by another still more brilliant, obtained by applying the same procedure of isolation to the solar prominences. On this occasion (20 October 1868) honours were shared with the French astronomer, Dr. P. J. C. Janssen, whose observations, suggested to him in India by the total solar eclipse of 18 August 1868, were by a remarkable coincidence communicated to the Paris Academy of Sciences on the same day as those of Lockyer. The French government, however, recognized the great merit of both discoverers by striking a special medal in their honour in 1872.

Other discoveries by Lockyer soon fol--

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