Lord Rayleigh, tervenisti Terling Place'i 3. parun Rayleighi John William Strutt (sündinud 12. novembril 1842 Langfordi Grove'is Maldonis Inglismaal Essexis - suri 30. juunil 1919 Terling Place'is Withamis Essexis), inglise füüsikuteadlane, kes tegi akustika ja optika valdkonnas fundamentaalseid avastusi, mis on vedelike laine leviku teooria põhialused. Argooni, inertse atmosfäärigaasi eduka isoleerimise eest sai ta 1904. aastal Nobeli füüsikapreemia.
Viktoriin
Inglise mehed eristumisel: fakt või väljamõeldis?
Suurbritannias on rüütli pealkiri "härra".
Strutt kannatas kogu lapsepõlve ja noorpõlve jooksul kehva tervisega ning oli vajalik, et ta taandataks nii Etonist kui Harrowist. Aastal 1857 alustas ta neli aastat eraõpet juhendaja käe all. Aastal 1861 astus Strutt Cambridge'i Trinity kolledžisse, kust ta lõpetas bakalaureuseõppe 1865. aastal. Ta arendas juba varakult huvi füüsilise teaduse eksperimentaalse ja matemaatilise poole vastu ning 1868 ostis ta sõltumatuteks teadusuuringuteks teadusliku aparaadi komplekti.. Oma esimeses artiklis, mis avaldati 1869. aastal, andis ta Šoti füüsiku James Clerk Maxwelli elektromagnetilise teooria mõningate aspektide selge kirjelduse analoogiate osas, millest keskmine inimene aru saaks.
Reumaatilise palaviku rünnak varsti pärast tema abielu 1871. aastal ohustas mõneks ajaks tema elu. Soovitati rekupeerivat reisi Egiptusesse ja Strutt viis oma pruudi Arthur James Balfouri õe Evelyn Balfouri paadireisile Niilusele üles pikendatud talvepuhkuseks. Sellel ekskursioonil alustas ta tööd oma suurepärase raamatu Heli teooria kallal, milles ta uuris vibratsiooni ning elastsete tahkete ainete ja gaaside resonantsi küsimusi. Esimene köide ilmus 1877. aastal, sellele järgnes teine 1878. aastal, keskendudes akustiliste levikutele materjalis. Pärast mõningast revideerimist oma elu jooksul ja järgnenud kordustrükke pärast tema surma on teos jäänud akustilise kirjanduse kõige olulisemaks monumendiks.
Shortly after returning to England he succeeded to the title of Baron Rayleigh in 1873, on the death of his father. Rayleigh then took up residence at Terling Place, where he built a laboratory adjacent to the manor house. His early papers deal with such subjects as electromagnetism, colour, acoustics, and diffraction gratings. Perhaps his most significant early work was his theory explaining the blue colour of the sky as the result of scattering of sunlight by small particles in the atmosphere. The Rayleigh scattering law, which evolved from this theory, has since become classic in the study of all kinds of wave propagation.
Rayleigh’s one excursion into academic life came in the period 1879–84, when he agreed to serve as the second Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge, in succession to James Clerk Maxwell. There Rayleigh carried out a vigorous research program on the precision determination of electrical standards. A classical series of papers, published by the Royal Society, resulted from this ambitious work. After a tenure of five years he returned to his laboratory at Terling Place, where he carried out practically all his scientific investigations.
A few months after resigning from Cambridge, Rayleigh became secretary of the Royal Society, an administrative post that, during the next 11 years, allowed considerable freedom for research.
Rayleigh’s greatest single contribution to science is generally considered to have been his discovery and isolation of argon, one of the rare gases of the atmosphere. Precision measurements of the density of gases conducted by him in the 1880s led to the interesting discovery that the density of nitrogen obtained from the atmosphere is greater by a small though definite amount than is the density of nitrogen obtained from one of its chemical compounds, such as ammonia. Excited by this anomaly and stimulated by some earlier observations of the ingenious but eccentric 18th-century scientist Henry Cavendish on the oxidation of atmospheric nitrogen, Rayleigh decided to explore the possibility that the discrepancy he had discovered resulted from the presence in the atmosphere of a hitherto undetected constituent. After a long and arduous experimental program, he finally succeeded in 1895 in isolating the gas, which was appropriately named argon, from the Greek word meaning “inactive.” Rayleigh shared the priority of the discovery with the chemist William Ramsay, who also isolated the new gas, though he began his work after Rayleigh’s publication of the original density discrepancy.Shortly before winning the Nobel Prize, Rayleigh wrote the entry on argon for the 10th edition (1902) of the Encyclopædia. In 1904 Rayleigh was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics; Ramsay received the award in chemistry for his work on argon and other inert elements. The next year Rayleigh was elected president of the Royal Society.
In his later years, when he was the foremost leader in British physics, Rayleigh served in influential advisory capacities in education and government. In 1908 he accepted the post of chancellor of the University of Cambridge, retaining this position until his death. He was also associated with the National Physical Laboratory and government committees on aviation and the treasury. Retaining his mental powers until the end, he worked on scientific papers until five days before his death, on June 30, 1919.
