Profile
Lord Rayleigh: The Physicist Who Explained the Blue Sky
British physicist, born 1842
John William Strutt was born in Langford Grove on 12 November 1842.
He explained why the sky is blue through the theory now called Rayleigh scattering.
He discovered the gas argon with William Ramsay in 1894.
He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904.
Career highlights
- 1871Blue sky: publishes scattering theory
- 1873Peerage: becomes 3rd Baron Rayleigh
- 1877Theory of Sound: first volume published
- 1894Argon: discovered with William Ramsay
- 1904Nobel: wins the physics prize
Did you know?He succeeded James Clerk Maxwell as Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge in 1879.