{{Short description|American astrophysicist and inventor}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Jonathan Homer Lane | image = | image_size = 150px | caption = Jonathan Homer Lane | birth_date = August 9, 1819 | birth_place = Geneseo, New York | death_date = {{Death-date and age|May 3, 1880|August 9, 1819}} | death_place = Washington, D.C. | residence = | citizenship = | field = astrophysics | work_institutions = | alma_mater = Yale University | doctoral_advisor = | doctoral_students = | known_for = Lane–Emden equation | prizes = | footnotes = | signature = }} '''Jonathan Homer Lane''' (August 9, 1819 – May 3, 1880) was an American astrophysicist and inventor.

==Biography== Lane's parents were Mark and Henrietta (née Tenny) Lane<ref name="TrimbleWilliams2007">{{cite book|author1=Virginia Trimble|author2=Thomas R. Williams|author3=Katherine Bracher|title=Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t-BF1CHkc50C&pg=PA673|year=2007|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-0-387-30400-7|page=673|chapter=Jonathan Homer Lane |display-authors=etal}}</ref> and his education was at the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. He graduated from Yale University in 1846. While at Yale, Lane studied under astronomer Denison Olmsted. Olmsted’s interest in meteorology, particularly his support for James P. Espy’s thermodynamic model of storms, appear to closely parallel Lane’s later scientific interests and may have influenced him in that direction.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Powell |first=C. S. |date=1988 |title=J Homer Lane and the Internal Structure of the Sun |journal=Journal for the History of Astronomy |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=183–189 |doi=10.1177/002182868801900303|bibcode=1988JHA....19..183P |s2cid=118285479 }}</ref>

Lane worked for the U.S. Patent Office, and became a principal examiner in 1851, continuing in that position until forced out by a change of political administrations in 1857. From 1860 to 1866, he lived with his brother, a blacksmith, in Franklin, Pennsylvania. During that time, he actively worked on developing an improved "cold apparatus" with which he hoped to reach temperatures as low as -345&nbsp;°F (-209&nbsp;°C), building on the work of Sir William Siemens.<ref name=":0" /> In 1869 he joined the Office of Weights and Measures, a part of the Department of the Treasury that later became the National Bureau of Standards.

Lane was particularly interested in astronomy, and was the first to perform a mathematical analysis of the Sun as a gaseous body. His investigations demonstrated the thermodynamic relations between pressure, temperature, and density of the gas within the Sun, and formed the foundation of what would in the future become the theory of stellar evolution (see Lane-Emden equation).

Simon Newcomb, in his memoirs, describes Lane as "an odd-looking and odd-mannered little man, rather intellectual in appearance, who listened attentively to what others said, but who, so far as I noticed, never said a word himself." Newcomb recounts his own role in bringing Lane's work, in 1876, to the attention of William Thomson who further popularized the work. Newcomb notes, "it is very singular that a man of such acuteness never achieved anything else of significance."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Newcomb |first=Simon |title=Reminiscences of an Astronomer |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin |year=1903 |pages=245–248}}</ref>

The crater Lane on the Moon is named after him.

==Published works== * {{cite journal|last=Lane|first=Jonathan Homer|author-link=Jonathan Homer Lane|title=On the theoretical temperature of the Sun, under the hypothesis of a gaseous mass maintaining its volume by its internal heat, and depending on the laws of gases as known to terrestrial experiment|journal=American Journal of Science|volume=50|series=2|issue=148|year=1870|pages=57–74|issn=0002-9599|doi=10.2475/ajs.s2-50.148.57|display-authors=0|bibcode=1870AmJS...50...57L|s2cid=131102972|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1450030}}

==References== {{reflist}}

==Further reading== {{refbegin}} * {{cite book|last=Newcomb|first=Simon|date=1903|title=The Reminiscences of an Astronomer|pages=[https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesan00newcgoog/page/n268 246]–249|url=https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesan00newcgoog|publisher=Houghton, Mifflin|location=Boston}} * {{DSB|first=N.|last=Reingold|title=Lane, Jonathan Homer|volume=8|pages=1-3}} {{refend}}

==External links== * [http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/lane-j-homer.pdf National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lane, Jonathan Homer}} Category:1819 births Category:1880 deaths Category:19th-century American inventors Category:American astronomers Category:Patent examiners Category:Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Category:Yale University alumni