[2] 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.
[2] 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."