Lord Rayleigh

He suffered from rheumatic fever right after his marriage. So, he and his wife went for a recuperative trip to Egypt. It was during this trip that he started writing ‘The Theory of Sound’.

Lord Rayligh worked on his scientific papers even five days before his death. He died on 30 June 1919, in Witham, Essex.

John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh, was born on November 12, 1842 at Langford Grove, Maldon, Essex to John James Srutt and Clara Elizabeth Latouche Vicars.

His father was the second Baron Rayleigh of Terling Place, Witham, Essex.

John was the eldest of all his siblings— Clara, Richard, Charles and Edward.

He belonged from a family of landowners with no interest in science; the only exception was his distant relative, Robert Boyle.

During childhood, he suffered from a frail health and his schooling was interrupted due to frequent bouts of illness.

In 1871, Rayleigh published his theory of scattering which was the first right explanation of the blue color of the sky.

From 1876 to 1878, he served as President of the London Mathematical Society.

In 1877 he published the first volume of his major text ‘The Theory of Sound’. The second volume came out in the next year.

From 1879 to 1884, Lord Rayleigh served as the second Cavendish Professor of Physics. During this time, he carried out experiments on standardisation ohm. He explained the results of this experiment in his presidential address to the British Association in Montreal.

In 1884 he returned to Terling to carry out practical experiments at his own estate.

Lord Rayleigh made the interesting discovery that the density of nitrogen available in the atmosphere is greater than the density obtained from chemical compounds. This anomaly, along with some observations made by the 18th century scientist Henry Cavendish inspired him to launch a long experimental program. In 1895, he isolated the gas and named it ‘argon’, derived from the Greek word that means ‘inactive’. This discovery won him Nobel Prize.