John william strutt biography channel

He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Among many honours, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies". He served as president of the Royal Society from to and as chancellor of the University of Cambridge from to Rayleigh provided the first theoretical treatment of the elastic scattering of light by particles much smaller than the light's wavelength, a phenomenon now known as " Rayleigh scattering ", which notably explains why the sky is blue.

John William Strutt, third

He studied and described transverse surface waves in solids, now known as " Rayleigh waves ". He contributed extensively to fluid dynamics , with concepts such as the Rayleigh number a dimensionless number associated with natural convection , Rayleigh flow , the Rayleigh—Taylor instability , and Rayleigh's criterion for the stability of Taylor—Couette flow.

He also formulated the circulation theory of aerodynamic lift. In optics , Rayleigh proposed a well-known criterion for angular resolution. His derivation of the Rayleigh—Jeans law for classical black-body radiation later played an important role in the birth of quantum mechanics see ultraviolet catastrophe. Rayleigh's textbook The Theory of Sound is still used today by acousticians and engineers.

He introduced the Rayleigh test for circular non-uniformity, of which the Rayleigh plot visualizes. He had three sons with her. Rayleigh was elected fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June He first described dynamic soaring by seabirds in , in the British journal Nature. On this post he carefully and precisely measured atomic mass of oxygen and hydrogen, and by he moved on to nitrogen.

By isolating nitrogen in different ways he discovered a small but significant difference, which indicated a heavier inert gas present in the air besides nitrogen. William Ramsay joined this research topic, and in August they discovered argon.