Through Barlow, Crookes met scientists such as George Gabriel Stokes and Michael Faraday. Such friends reinforced Crookes' interest in optical physics which was respected by Hofmann. By 1851, Crookes' interest in photography and optics caused his father to build him a laboratory in the garden at home for his research. When Crookes embarked upon original work, it wasn't in organic chemistry, but rather into new compounds of selenium. These were the subject of his first published papers, in 1851. He worked with Manuel Johnson at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford in 1854, where he adapted the recent innovation of wax paper photography to machines built by Francis Ronalds to continuously record meteorological parameters. In 1855 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester Diocesan Training College. In April 1856 Crookes married Ellen, daughter of William Humphrey of Darlington. Since staff at Chester were required to be bachelors, he had to resign his position. William's father, Joseph Crookes, gave the couple a house at 15 Stanley Street, Brompton. Ellen's mother, Mrs. Humphrey, lived with them for the rest of her life, nearly forty years. A devoted couple, William and Ellen Crookes had six sons and three daughters. Their first child, Alice Mary (born 1857, later Mrs. Cowland) remained unmarried for forty years, living with her parents and working as an assistant to her father. Two of Crookes' sons became engineers, and two lawyers. Married and living in London, Crookes sought to support his new family through independent work as a photographic chemist. In 1859, he founded the "Chemical News", a science magazine which he edited for many years and conducted on much less formal lines than was usual for the journals of scientific societies. Between 1864 and 1869, he was also involved with the "Quarterly Journal of Science". At various times he edited the "Journal of the Photographic Society" and the "Photographic News". Crookes was effective in experimentation. The method of spectral analysis, introduced by Bunsen and Kirchhoff, was received by Crookes with great enthusiasm and to great effect. His first important discovery was that of the element thallium, made with the help of flame spectroscopy. Crookes discovered a previously unknown element with a bright green emission line in its spectrum. He named the element thallium, from Greek , , meaning "a green shoot or twig". Crookes's findings were published on 30 March 1861.