LANE, JONATHAN HOMER (b. Genesee, New York, 9 August 1819 ; d. Washington, D.C., 3 May 1880), physics. Lane left school at the age of eight but acquired enough learning by himself at home to teach in rural schools. In 1839 he entered Phillips Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire. While there, according to his own account, he became interested in what was to be his principal intellectual preoccupation, the experimental determination of absolute zero . He entered Yale, where he was apparently influenced by Denison Olmsted, and graduated in 1846 .