News and Views

Abstract

SINCERE regret will be felt throughout the world of science at the destruction by fire of a large part of Lord Rayleigh's laboratory at Terling Place, Chelmsford, Essex, on Mar. 7. After taking his degree at Cambridge in 1865, the late Lord Rayleigh found great difficulties in getting opportunities for experimental research or instruction in laboratory work. Three years later he started experiments on his own account at Terling Place, and from there produced a number of papers which at once secured for him a position as a leader in physical science. When he resigned from the chair of experimental physics at Cambridge in 1884, he continued his researches in his private laboratory, and it was there that he carried out the precise determinations of the density of nitrogen which led to the discovery of argon. The simplicity of the apparatus used by the late Lord Rayleigh is well known, and most visitors to the laboratory were astonished that results of prime significance could be obtained with such modest equipments. We are glad to know that most of this historic apparatus has been saved as well as all books and papers belonging to the late Lord Rayleigh.