Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh
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Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh (28 August 1875 – 13 December 1947) was a British peer and physicist. He discovered "active nitrogen" and was the first to distinguish the glow of the night sky.


Early life and education

Strutt was born at Terling Place, the family home near
Witham Witham () is a town and civil parish in the Braintree district, in the county of Essex, England. In the 2011 census, it had a population of 25,353. It is twinned with the town of Waldbröl, Germany. Witham stands on the Roman road between the ...
, Essex, the eldest son of
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh ( ; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919), was an English physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904 "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery ...
and his wife Evelyn Georgiana Mary (). He was thus a nephew of
Arthur Balfour Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (; 25 July 184819 March 1930) was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As Foreign Secretary ...
and of
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (née Balfour; 11 March 1845 – 10 February 1936) was a physics researcher assisting Lord Rayleigh, an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College of the University of Cambridge, and a le ...
. He was educated at
Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...
and
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...
, where he initially read mathematics, but changed after two terms to
Natural Sciences Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...
.A. C. Egerton, 'Strutt, Robert John, fourth Baron Rayleigh (1875–1947)', rev. Isobel Falconer He became a research student in physics at the
Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...
under J. J. Thomson, whose biography he subsequently wrote. His work at this time was on discharge of electricity through gases, including early work on x-rays and electrons. He wrote one of the first books on radioactivity, ''The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium'' (E. Arnold, 1904). He was awarded the Coutts Trotter studentship in 1898 and was a Fellow of Trinity College 1900–1906. He received his M.A. in 1901.


Career

Strutt was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
in May 1905 when his candidature citation read: He delivered their
Bakerian Lecture The Bakerian Medal is one of the premier medals of the Royal Society that recognizes exceptional and outstanding science. It comes with a medal award and a prize lecture. The medalist is required to give a lecture on any topic related to physical ...
in 1911 and 1919. He was president of the
British Association The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chief ...
for the year 1937–1938. Strutt's best known work in the period 1904–1910 was the estimation of the age of minerals and rocks by measurement of their radium and helium content. In 1908 he was appointed Professor of Physics at
Imperial College Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a cultural district in South Kensington that included museums ...
, London where he followed up his father's work on light scattering, which is now known as
Rayleigh scattering Rayleigh scattering ( ) is the scattering or deflection of light, or other electromagnetic radiation, by particles with a size much smaller than the wavelength of the radiation. For light frequencies well below the resonance frequency of the scat ...
, resulting in some papers published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. He published a biography of his father, the third Baron Rayleigh, with the title of "Life of John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh". Photographs of Robert John Strutt when he was young can be found in this book. Both the father and son's work on light scattering was discussed by Young in 1982. A sketch of Robert John Strutt when he was old can also be found in Young (1982). (Please see reference.) In 1910 Robert Strutt discovered that an electrical discharge in nitrogen gas produced "active nitrogen", an
allotrope Allotropy or allotropism () is the property of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different forms, in the same physical state, known as allotropes of the elements. Allotropes are different structural modifications of an element: the ...
considered to be
monatomic In physics and chemistry, "monatomic" is a combination of the words "mono" and "atomic", and means "single atom". It is usually applied to gases: a monatomic gas is a gas in which atoms are not bound to each other. Examples at standard conditions ...
. The "whirling cloud of brilliant yellow light" produced by his apparatus reacted with quicksilver to produce explosive mercury nitride. In 1916, working with his colleague
Alfred Fowler Alfred Fowler, CBE FRS (22 March 1868, in Yorkshire – 24 June 1940) was an English astronomer and spectroscopist. Early life and career He was born in Wilsden on the outskirts of Bradford, Yorkshire and educated at London's Norma ...
, Strutt was the first to prove the existence of ozone in the atmosphere by examining the ultra-violet spectrum of the setting sun. Strutt proved that the ozone was mainly located in the upper atmosphere, in what is now called the
ozone layer The ozone layer or ozone shield is a region of Earth's stratosphere that absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorbs most of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. It contains a high concentration of ozone (O3) in relation to other parts of the a ...
. Following the death of his father in 1919, Strutt resigned his chair at Imperial College but continued to experiment at home in the private laboratory that his father had established in an old stable block. His earlier work on gaseous discharge and fluorescence, led to further work on the luminosity of the night sky. He was the first to differentiate between two types of light from the night sky, the
aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...
or "northern lights", and the airglow that prevents the sky ever being completely dark anywhere on earth. In 1929 he was the first to measure the intensity of the light from the night sky. This work led to his posthumous nickname "the Airglow Rayleigh". The importance of his unpublished data was such that the US Airforce Cambridge Research Laboratories acquired it in 1963, almost by accident, at the same time of many of his father's experimental notebooks. They are now housed in the McDermott Library of the US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. The
rayleigh Rayleigh may refer to: Science *Rayleigh scattering *Rayleigh–Jeans law *Rayleigh waves *Rayleigh (unit), a unit of photon flux named after the 4th Baron Rayleigh *Rayl, rayl or Rayleigh, two units of specific acoustic impedance and characte ...
, a unit of
photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can ...
flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications in physics. For transport phe ...
used to measure
airglow Airglow is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffuse sky radiation, diffuse ...
, is named after him. A special issue of ''Applied Optics'' published in 1964 is devoted to the 3rd and 4th Barons Rayleigh.


Personal life

Strutt inherited his title on the death of his father in 1919, becoming the 4th Baron Rayleigh. He had married twice: firstly on 5 July 1905 Lady Mary Hilda Clements, daughter of Robert Clements, 4th Earl of Leitrim (she died 1919), and secondly, in 1920, Kathleen Alice, daughter of John Coppin-Straker of Northumberland. He had five children (including one who died in childhood) by his first wife, including his heir John Arthur Strutt, 5th Baron Rayleigh and the Hon. Charles Strutt; he had a sixth child by his second wife. *Violet Blanche Strutt (1906–1910) *John Arthur Strutt, 5th Baron Rayleigh (1908–1988); married Ursula Brocklebank, no issue *Hon. Charles Richard Strutt (1910–1981); married Hon. Jean Elizabeth Davidson (daughter of
J. C. C. Davidson, 1st Viscount Davidson John Colin Campbell Davidson, 1st Viscount Davidson, (23 February 1889 – 11 December 1970), known before his elevation to the peerage as J. C. C. Davidson, was a British civil servant and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party politici ...
and Frances Davidson, Viscountess Davidson, herself the daughter of Willoughby Dickinson, 1st Baron Dickinson). Their only son John Gerald Strutt is the 6th Baron (current holder). *Hon. Daphne Strutt (1911–2003); notably converted to Roman Catholicism after marrying John Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, 3rd Baron Acton, 11 children including the 4th Baron Acton *Hon. Hedley Vicars Strutt (1915–2012); served in
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
with the
Scots Guards The Scots Guards (SG) is one of the five Foot guards#United Kingdom, Foot Guards regiments of the British Army. Its origins are as the personal bodyguard of King Charles I of England and Scotland. Its lineage can be traced back to 1642 in the Ki ...
*Hon. Guy Robert Strutt (1921–2007) He died in Terling, Essex.


See also

*
Labradorite Labradorite (( Ca, Na)( Al, Si)4 O8) is a calcium-enriched feldspar mineral first identified in Labrador, Canada, which can display an iridescent effect ( schiller). Labradorite is an intermediate to calcic member of the plagioclase series. It ...


References


Further reading

* *Andrew T. Young, "Rayleigh scattering", ''Physics Today'', pp. 42–48 (January 1982). *


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rayleigh, Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron 1875 births 1947 deaths People educated at Eton College 4 English physicists Fellows of the Royal Society Presidents of the British Science Association
Robert The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' () "fame, glory, honour, prais ...
People from Witham