Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer died in Salcombe Regis, Devon, on 16 August 1920, aged 84. More than half a century earlier, his study of sunlight had helped identify an element that had not yet been found on Earth.

Lockyer began his working life as a civil servant at the War Office and pursued astronomy alongside his government work. He became particularly interested in spectroscopy, which let astronomers examine sunlight and identify substances from patterns in its spectrum.

In the 1860s, Lockyer developed a method to observe solar prominences without waiting for a total eclipse. The French astronomer Jules Janssen independently developed a similar method.

In 1868, Lockyer observed a yellow line in the solar spectrum that did not correspond to any element known at the time. He concluded that it came from an unknown substance. The element was named helium, from the Greek word for the Sun.

The conclusion was hard to confirm because no one had isolated helium on Earth. That did not happen until 1895, 27 years after the element had been identified through observations of the Sun.

Lockyer’s work extended beyond his own astronomical research. In 1869 he founded the scientific journal Nature with the publisher Alexander Macmillan. Lockyer edited the journal for 50 years, remaining in the post until 1919.

He also directed the Solar Physics Observatory at South Kensington. After its transfer to Cambridge, Lockyer established an observatory at Salcombe Regis, near Sidmouth in Devon. He died there in 1920.