Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • FEATURE

Lockyer’s columns of controversy in Nature

Publisher Alexander Macmillan chose Norman Lockyer as Nature’s founding Editor in 1869. It was an inspired choice, but Lockyer’s powerful personality courted controversy in the fledgling magazine. Ruth Barton investigates.
By
  1. Ruth Barton

    1. Ruth Barton is in the History Department at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Nature was founded in 1869 and was part of a mid-Victorian boom in periodical publishing stimulated by the abolition of newspaper taxation. Many of the thousands of new magazines and newspapers launched as a result included some scientific content, such as book reviews, but only about a dozen new journals devoted themselves to science for a general audience in the decade before Nature arrived on the scene; half of these survived to compete with Nature1,2. Nature shared most of the aims of its competitors and borrowed much of their format, but the chief difference was that Nature encouraged vigorous controversy within its pages.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01813-3

References

  1. Barton, R. Annals Sci. 55, 1–33 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Sheets-Pyenson, S. Annals Sci. 42, 549–572 (1985).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Barton, R. in Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (eds Henson, L. et al.) 223–235 (Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Meadows, A. J. Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer (Macmillan, London, 1972).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Kjærgaard, P. C. in Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (eds Henson, L. et al.) 211–221 (Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links