Robert Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh

Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh, ( born August 28, 1875 in Terling Place in Witham ( Essex ), † December 13, 1947 ) was a British physicist.

Life and work

Strutt was the son of the physicist Lord Rayleigh and was born at the family seat, Terling Place. His mother was the sister of the politician Arthur Balfour and Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. Strutt went to Eton to school and studied at Trinity College, University of Cambridge first mathematics and then physics. At Cambridge he was at the Cavendish Laboratory, JJ Thomson a student of and dealt with gas discharges, the study of the electron, X-rays and radioactivity. 1900-1906 he was a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1908 he became professor of physics at Imperial College London.

After the death of his father in 1919 he became the fourth Baron Rayleigh.

1904 to 1910 he dealt with the estimation of the age of minerals from which the content of radium and helium ( the decay product of alpha decay ). In 1911 he observed in gas discharges active or allotropic nitrogen, the yellow illumination produced and reacted violently, for example, mercury and other metals in the formation of nitrides (but also with non-metals such as phosphorus, sulfur). Strutt suspected that it was atomic nitrogen.

He dealt with Rayleigh scattering and the low-light of the night sky ( in 1929, earning him the nickname Airglow Rayleigh earned ). In 1916 he exhibited in measurements of the UV spectrum of the setting sun with Alfred Fowler, the existence of ozone in the atmosphere after.

He wrote one of the first books on radioactivity Becquerel rays and the properties The of radium and a biography of his father, Lord Rayleigh, JJ Thomson and Alfred Balfour.

He was since 1905 Fellow of the Royal Society, which honored him in 1920 with the Rumford Medal. 1911 and 1919 he held the Bakerian Lecture.

He was married twice. From his first marriage with Mary Hilda Clements ( Marriage 1905) he had five children from his second marriage ( Marriage 1920) with Kathlreen Alice Coppin - Straker a child.

Writings (selection )

• The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium. Edward Arnold, 1904.
• John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh. Edward Arnold, 1924.
• Lord Balfour and his relation to science. Cambridge University Press, 1930.
• The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson. Cambridge University Press, 1942.