Robert Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh

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Robert John Strutt 1934

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

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Strutt was the son of physicist John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh , and was born on the Terling Place family estate. His mother was the sister of politician Arthur Balfour and Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick . Strutt went to Eton to school and studied at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge first mathematics and physics. In Cambridge, he was a student of JJ Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory , studying gas discharges, the study of the electron, X-rays and radioactivity. 1900 to 1906 he was a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1908 he became professor of physics at Imperial College London .

After his father's death in 1919, he became the fourth Baron Rayleigh.

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

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

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

He had been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1905 , which honored him with the Rumford Medal in 1920 . In 1911 and 1919 he gave the Bakerian Lecture .

Strutt was married twice. From his first marriage to Mary Hilda Clements (marriage 1905) he had five children, from his second marriage (marriage 1920) to Kathleen Alice Coppin-Straker one child.

Fonts (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 JJ Thomson . Cambridge University Press, 1942.

literature

  • AC Egerton Lord Rayleigh. 1875-1947 . Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1948, p. 502.
  • Thaddeus J. Trenn: Strutt, Robert [Robin] John, Fourth Baron Rayleigh . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 13 : Hermann Staudinger - Giuseppe Veronese . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1976, p. 107-108 .

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personal data
SURNAME Strutt, Robert 4th Baron Rayleigh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strutt, Robert John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physicist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Terling Place near Witham (Essex)
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1947
Place of death Terling Place near Witham (Essex)