1882. The results obtained in the years 1862–1866 were discussed in two memoirs, entitled Researches on Solar Physics, published by De la Rue, in conjunction with Professor Balfour Stewart and Mr B Loewy, in the Phil. Trans. (vol. clix. pp. 1–110, and vol. clx. pp. 389–496). In 1860 De la Rue took the photoheliograph to Spain for the purpose of photographing the total solar eclipse which occurred on 18 July of that year. This expedition formed the subject of the Bakerian Lecture already referred to. The photographs obtained on that occasion proved beyond doubt the solar character of the prominences or red flames, seen around the limb of the moon during a solar eclipse. In 1873 De la Rue gave up active work in astronomy, and presented most of his astronomical instruments to the university observatory, Oxford. Subsequently, in the year 1887, he provided the same observatory with a 13-inch refractor to enable it to take part in the International Photographic Survey of the Heavens. With Dr Hugo Müller as his collaborator he published several papers of a chemical character between the years 1856 and 1862, and investigated, 1868–1883, the discharge of electricity through gases by means of a battery of 14,600 chloride of silver cells. He was twice president of the Chemical Society, and also of the Royal Astronomical Society (1864–1866) and in 1862 received the gold medal of the latter society. In June 1850 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in addition to their Bakerian Lecture in 1862 was awarded in 1864 their Royal Medal "for his observations on the 1860 total eclipse of the sun and his improvements in astronomical photography." He died in Marylebone in 1889. He had married Georgiana, the third daughter of Thomas Bowles of Guernsey; they had four sons and one daughter. Honours and awards Awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1862. Awarded the Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 1864. Awarded the Lalande Prize in 1866. The crater De La Rue on the Moon is named after him. Commander of the Legion of Honor (France). Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus (Italy). Knight of the Imperial Order of the Rose (Brazil). Notes Further reading External links 1815 births 1889 deaths 19th-century British astronomers 19th-century British chemists Guernsey photographers Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Fellows