John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was a British physicist who (with William Ramsay) discovered the element argon, an achievement that earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904. He also discovered the phenomenon now called Rayleigh scattering and predicted the existence of the surface waves now known as Rayleigh waves.

Strutt was born in Langford Grove in Essex and in his early years he suffered frailty and poor health.

He went to Harrow School and began studying mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1861 and graduated in 1865. He was subsequently elected to a Fellowship of Trinity. He held the post until his marriage to Evelyn Balfour in 1871.

In 1873 his father, the 2nd Baron Rayleigh, died, and he inherited the Barony of Rayleigh.

He was the second Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge, following James Clerk Maxwell in this position from 1879 to 1884.

Lord Rayleigh died on June 30, 1919 in Witham, Essex.

Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honor as well as a type of surface wave known as a Rayleigh wave.

See also

• Rayleigh criterion
• Rayleigh fading
• Rayleigh number
• Rayleigh quotient
• Rayleigh scattering
• Rayleigh (unit) (named after his son)
• Rayleigh waves
• Rayleigh-Jeans law
• Rayleigh distribution

External links

• Nobel website bio of Rayleigh
• About John William Strutt
• MacTutor biography of Lord Rayleigh
• Rayleigh Instability of Nanowires - a kinetic Monte Carlo simulation

British physicists | Discoverers of chemical elements | Nobel Prize in Physics winners | Presidents of the Royal Society | Chancellors of the University of Cambridge | Members of the Order of Merit | Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge | Old Etonians | Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | 1842 births | 1919 deaths

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