Rayleigh, John William Strutt
Rayleigh, John William Strutt, Third Baron (1842-1919), an English physicist. With William Ramsey, Rayleigh discovered the element argon, an inert gas, in 1894. For this achievement—which led to discoveries of an entire family of rare gases—Rayleigh won the 1904 Nobel Prize in physics.
Rayleigh's earlier work involved studies in photography, optics, electricity, and acoustics. In 1871 he confirmed the hypothesis of John Tyndall that the blue color of the sky is caused by the scattering of light by particles of dust; this has come to be called "Rayleigh scattering." Some of his other work led to improvements in the spectroscope and to more accurate standards for defining electrical units.
Rayleigh graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1865. Rayleigh was professor of physics at the Royal Institute of London, 1887-1905, and president of the Royal Society, 1905-08.