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Lord Rayleigh

Lord Rayleigh. a.k.a. John William Strutt. John William Strutt. Born: 12 Nov 1842 in Langford Grove (near Maldon), Essex, England Parents were wealthy landowners and agriculturally inclined (7000 acres) Was a sickly child, often having to interrupt formal education to recover from illness.

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Lord Rayleigh

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  1. Lord Rayleigh a.k.a. John William Strutt

  2. John William Strutt • Born: 12 Nov 1842 in Langford Grove (near Maldon), Essex, England • Parents were wealthy landowners and agriculturally inclined (7000 acres) • Was a sickly child, often having to interrupt formal education to recover from illness

  3. Education • After a short spell at Eton at the age of 10, mainly spent in the school sanatorium (health center), three years in a private school at Wimbledon, and another short stay at Harrow, he finally spent four years with the Rev. George Townsend Warner (1857) who took pupils at Torquay. In 1861 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he commenced reading mathematics. He graduated in the Mathematical Tripos in 1865 as Senior Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman. In 1866 he obtained a fellowship at Trinity which he held until 1871, the year of his marriage.

  4. Lord Rayleigh • Married Evelyn Balfour in 1871, daughter of James Maitland Balfour, a future Prime Minister • Title comes from being the third Baron Rayleigh (not exactly sure what that means other than he was rich) • Succeeded to the title at 30 years of age after father’s death (1873) • They had three sons, the eldest of whom became Professor of Physics at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London • Died: 30 June 1919 in Terling Place, Witham, Essex, England

  5. Contributions • He was good at managing the family land, but in 1876 he left that to his brother so he could pursue scientific research • 1877 Published The Theory of Sound • 1896 Isolated the element Argon, introducing it to the scientific world. • Published many papers and had a knack for explaining science in a way that made sense to the common man (ex: Insects and the colour of flowers (1874), On the irregular flight of a tennis ball (1877), The soaring of birds (1883), The sailing flight of the albatross (1889), and The problem of the Whispering Gallery (1910))

  6. Awards • Lord Rayleigh, a former Chancellor of Cambridge University, was a Justice of the Peace and the recipient of honorary science and law degrees. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1873) and served as Secretary from 1885 to 1896, and as President from 1905 to 1908. He was an original recipient of the Order of Merit (1902), and in 1905 he was made a Privy Councillor. He was awarded the Copley, Royal, and Rumford Medals of the Royal Society, and the Nobel Prize for 1904, "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies"

  7. “... It is a good rule in experimental work to seek to magnify a discrepancy when it first appears rather than to follow the natural instinct to trying to get quit of it.”- Lord Rayleigh

  8. References - nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1904/strutt-bio.html - www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Rayleigh.html - www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/495_84.html

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