Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Baron Rayleigh
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- John William Strutt, OM, PRS
- 3rd Baron Rayleigh
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
12 November 1842 - 30 June 1919
History
(from Wikipedia entry)
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, OM, PRS (12 November 1842 - 30 June 1919) was an English physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904. He also discovered the phenomenon now called Rayleigh scattering, which can be used to explain why the sky is blue, and predicted the existence of the surface waves now known as Rayleigh waves. Rayleigh's textbook, The Theory of Sound, is still referred to by acoustic engineers today. John William Strutt, of Terling Place Essex, suffered from frailty and poor health in his early years. He attended Harrow School, before going on to the University of Cambridge in 1861 where he studied mathematics at Trinity College. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree (Senior Wrangler and 1st Smith's prize) in 1865, and a Master of Arts in 1868. He was subsequently elected to a Fellowship of Trinity. He held the post until his marriage to Evelyn Balfour, daughter of James Maitland Balfour, in 1871. He had three sons with her. In 1873, on the death of his father, John Strutt, 2nd Baron Rayleigh, he inherited the Barony of Rayleigh.
He was the second Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge (following James Clerk Maxwell), from 1879 to 1884. He first described dynamic soaring by seabirds in 1883, in the British journal Nature. From 1887 to 1905 he was Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge.
Around the year 1900 Lord Rayleigh developed the duplex (combination of two) theory of human sound localization using two binaural cues, interaural phase difference (IPD) and interaural level difference (ILD) (based on analysis of a spherical head with no external pinnae). The theory posits that we use two primary cues for sound lateralization, using the difference in the phases of sinusoidal components of the sound and the difference in amplitude (level) between the two ears.
The rayl unit of acoustic impedance is named after him.
As an advocate that simplicity and theory be part of the scientific method, Lord Rayleigh argued for the principle of similitude.
Lord Rayleigh was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June 1873, and served as president of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908. From time to time Lord Rayleigh participated in the House of Lords; however, he spoke up only if politics attempted to become involved in science. He died on 30 June 1919, in Witham, Essex. He was succeeded, as the 4th Lord Rayleigh, by his son Robert John Strutt, another well-known physicist. Lord Rayleigh was an Anglican. Though he did not write about the relationship of science and religion, he retained a personal interest in spiritual matters.
For more information, see Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Strutt,_3rd_Baron_Rayleigh .
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Related entity
Identifier of related entity
Category of relationship
Dates of relationship
Description of relationship
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Final
Level of detail
Partial
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Created 2015-10-29 by Anna St.Onge.
Language(s)
- English
Script(s)
- Latin