Rayleigh, John William Strutt, Lord

Helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and the radioactive element radon make up a most unusual group of non-metals, called the noble gases. They were all discovered after Mendeleev had published his periodic table. They were discovered between 1894 and 1900, mainly through the work of the British scientists Sir William Ramsay (Figure 9.16a) and Lord John William Strutt Rayleigh (Figure 9.16b). 

Argon Ar 1894 (London and Bristol, England) John William Strutt,aka Lord Rayleigh (British) and Sir William Ramsay (Scottish) 267... 

John William Strutt, the third Lord Rayleigh, was born at Terling on November 12,1842. His ability for clear thinking and self-expression was evident in his student days, and when he was Senior Wrangler in the Tripos in 1865, one of his examiners remarked, Strutt s papers were so good that they could have been sent straight to press without revision (41). 

John William Strutt, the Third Lord Rayleigh, 1842-1919. 

Birth of John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh, at Terling, England. 

William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt) isolated the noble gases. 

Argon was discovered in 1894 by English chemist John William Strutt, most commonly known as Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919), and Scottish chemist William Ramsay (1852-1916). It was the first of the noble gases to be isolated. 

From Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), On the instability in Jets, Proc. London Math, Soc. 10 4-13 (1879) reprinted in Scientific Papers of Lord Rayleigh, Dover, New York, 1964, p. 362. Quoted by permission of the publisher. 

The solid work Bohr took up, in February 1905, when he was nineteen years old, was a problem in experimental physics. Each year the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters announced problems for study against a two-year deadline, after which the academy awarded gold and silver medals for successful papers. In 1905 the physics problem was to determine the surface tension of a number of liquids by measuring the waves produced in those liquids when they were allowed to run out through a hole (the braided cascade of a garden hose demonstrates such waves). The method had been proposed by the British Nobelist John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh, but no one had yet tried it out. Bohr and one other contestant accepted the challenge. 

Table. These gases led their discoverers on a chase before revealing their nature, but as is now known, not because they are particularly rare but because they are noble. Noble materials are highly unreac-tive, or inert (the noble metals include gold and platinum), and this lack of reactivity means they are hard to isolate and characterize by chemical means. But as always if there is a challenge, there are those who are willing to take it up. In the case of the rare gases the champions were John William Strutt, the Third Baron Rayleigh (Lord Rayleigh) and William Ramsay.

P.N.T. Wells, Lord Rayleigh John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh. IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control 54(3), 591-596 (2007). doi 10.1109/ TUFFC.2007.281... 

Although mathematical theory is central to aU acoustics, the two major divisions, physical and applied acoustics, evolved from the central theoretical core. In the late nineteenth century, Hermann von Helmholtz and Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), two polymaths, developed the theoretical aspects. Helmholtz s contributions to acoustics were primarily in explaining the physiological aspects of the ear. Rayleigh, a well-educated wealthy English baron, synthesized virtually all previous knowledge of acoustics and also formulated an appreciable corpus of experiment and theory. 

Perhaps the most significant addition to the periodic table came with the discovery of the noble gases. In 1894, English physicist John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) and Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay discovered argon, Ar, a gas in the atmosphere that had previously escaped notice because of its total lack of chemical reactivity. Back in 1868 another noble gas, helium. He, had been discovered as a component of the sun. In 1895, Ramsay showed that helium also exists on Earth. 

When the particles are less than the wavelength of light the appropriate theory of light scattering is known as the Rayleigh Theory. It was developed by Lord Rayleigh an English Physicist (1842-1919). Before he acquired the title from his father, his family name was John William Strutt. Scientists interested in the optical properties of very small spherical particles, such as the latex emulsions used in the paint industry and in... 

Strutt, John William (Lord Rayleigh) was born 12 November 1842 and died 30 June 1919. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904 for discovering Ar and succeeded James Clerk Maxwell as the Cavendish Professor in Cambridge. 

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