We find out about Lockyer's work in the civil service, which left him plenty of time to enter into scientific correspondence, leading to his founding of the well known scientific journal Nature. Lockyer was involved in the spectrographic study of the sun and became Director of the Solar Physics Observatory at South Kensington. He played a prominent part in the expansion of scientific education, but had plenty of non-mainstream ideas, and so was often involved in scientific controversies. The book also describes Lockyer's family life and his work in astro-archeology.

I have to say that I found the book a bit of a struggle. I like biographies to be in chronological order, but I can understand that sometimes it is better to treat different aspects of a person's life separately. However, in this book, even within a chapter there is a considerable amount of jumping backwards and forwards in time, and it makes it hard to follow. If you have an interest in the professionalisation of science which took place in the later part of the nineteenth century then you might want to take a look, but it doesn't have much about the early days of Nature and I didn't find it a particularly entertaining read."; include "amazinf.php"; ?>