Baron Rayleigh Research Articles

Uses and Forms of Instruments: Resonator and Tuning Fork in Rayleigh's Acoustical Experiments

Summary The resonator and the tuning fork were major instruments in acoustics in the latter half of the nineteenth-century. In particular, the third Baron Rayleigh made extensive use of these instruments throughout his long career as an experimentalist. These instruments underwent a number of alterations during their use as central experimental tools in acoustics. Functional and structural alterations were introduced in the adaptation of these instruments to several major acousticians’ experimental settings. Rayleigh not only adopted the two instruments as objects of mathematical and experimental investigation but also employed them ingeniously for various purposes. His continuing creation of a variety of uses and forms of these instruments contributed to focusing acoustics on pure tones and musical sounds until the early twentieth century.

Lord Rayleigh: John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh

John William Strutt, first son of the second Baron Rayleigh, was born on November 12, 1842. He was a sickly boy, so his schooling was sporadic. Nevertheless, he graduated first in his year at Cambridge and subsequently was a Fellow of Trinity College until his marriage in 1871. His father died in 1873, and he succeeded to the title third Baron Rayleigh. He converted the stable block of his country house, Terling Place, into a laboratory. In 1879, he moved back to Cambridge as Professor of Experimental Physics, but he returned to Terling in 1884. He published The Theory of Sound in 1877/1878 and, in his lifetime, 466 scientific articles. He received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of argon and made numerous seminal contributions to scientific progress. In the field of acoustics, he studied scattering, the diffraction limit, surface waves, resonance phenomena, reciprocity, streaming, radiation force, cavitation, relaxation, and binaural perception. He received many honors, was President of the Royal Society, one of the founding members of the Order of Merit, and Chancellor of Cambridge University. He also was interested in psychical research. Lord Rayleigh died on June 30, 1919.

Ethers, Religion and Politics in Late-Victorian Physics: Beyond the Wynne Thesis

In the past thirty years historians have demonstrated that the ether of physics was one of the most fl exible of all concepts in the natural sciences. Cantor and Hodge’s seminal collection of essays of 1981 showed how during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries British and European natural philosophers invented a range of ethers to fulfi l diverse functions from the chemical and physiological to the physical and theological. 1 In religious discourse, for example, Cantor identifi ed “animate” and spiritual ethers invented by neo-Platonists, mystics and some Anglicans to provide a mechanism for supporting their belief in Divine immanence in the cosmos; material, mechanistic and contact-action ethers that appealed to atheists and Low Churchmen because such media enabled activity in the universe without constant and direct Divine intervention; and semi-spiritual/semi-material ethers that appealed to dualists seeking a mechanism for understanding the interaction of mind and matter. 2 The third type proved especially attractive to Oliver Lodge and several other late-Victorian physicists who claimed that the extraordinary physical properties of the ether made it a possible mediator between matter and spirit, and a weapon in their fi ght against materialistic conceptions of the cosmos. 3 Lodge was, of course, one of many late nineteenth-century British physicists who were involved in psychical research. More physicists than representatives of other scientifi c disciplines reached senior positions during early decades of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), that symbol of the Victorian intellectual preoccupation with the occult which was founded in 1882. The SPR boasted Balfour Stewart, William Crookes, William Fletcher Barrett, and the third Baron Rayleigh as presidents, J. J. Thomson as a vice-president, and Arthur Chattock, Arthur Schuster, W. C. D. Whetham and many other physicists as ordinary members. It is tempting to think that physicists’ marked interest in the mysterious, and typically invisible and imponderable phenomena, of psychical research was linked to their adherence to the hypothesis of an invisible and imponderable ether. Connections between the ether and the kind of phenomena studied by late-Victorian psychical researchers certainly had some pedigree. From the mid-nineteenth century many spiritualists speculated that “spiritual” ethers or ethereal elements were involved in the production of clairvoyance, telekinesis, and the manifestation of spirits, and they championed physicists’ conception of the ethereal basis of matter as a sign that science in general and physics in particular was becoming spiritualistic. 4 But to what extent did the ether constitute a link between physicists and psychical research?

The History of Sonographers

I thank all who have made it possible for me to write this history by giving me an opportunity to be a part of it. I also thank Ann Polin, Carolyn Coffin, and Jean Lea Spitz for assistance. Abbreviations ACR, American College of Radiology; AIUM, American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine; AMA, American Medical Association; ARDMS, American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers; ASE, American Society of Echocardiography; ASUTS, American Society of Ultrasound Technical Specialists; CAHEA, Committee on Allied Health Education and Accreditation; JRCDMS, Joint Review Committee on Education in Diagnostic Medical Sonography; SDMS, Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers/Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography; SVT, Society of Vascular Technology; WFUMB, World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology ne of the most important questions to be answered when writing a history of the profession is where to begin. Pythagoras certainly played a role when he observed the relationship between sound pitch and frequency, but he did not make this observation related to medicine. John William Strutt, the third Baron Rayleigh, one of the few members of nobility to also be an outstanding scientist and 1904 Nobel Prize winner, published among many works the Theory of Sound. Christian Doppler lent his name to the Doppler effect, something we use every day when performing sonographic procedures. But many think that the true conception of ultrasound occurred in 1880 with the discovery of piezoelectricity by the French physicist Pierre Curie. Along with his brother Jacques, he performed experiments that showed that when certain crystals are subjected to an electrical field, they can be made to expand and contract, converting electrical into mechanical energy. These piezoelectric crystals can then act as both transmitters and receivers of sound. Since the early days of medicine, there has been a great desire to “see” inside the body. This is what drove Roentgen to develop x rays in 1895, Helmholtz the ophthalmoscope in 1851, Garcia the laryngoscope in 1854, and Nitze the cystoscope in 1876. Sound was first applied to the human body through auscultation in 1761 and the stethoscope in 1819, and interpreting these sounds required imagination, as did interpreting the early sonographic images. In the beginning, Doppler ultrasound was also strictly an analysis of audible sound.1,2 The use of ultrasound in medicine is similar to many technologic advances that owe their fame to war. The French government asked Paul Langevin, PhD, to develop a device capable of detecting submerged enemy submarines. The device he developed used the piezoelectric effect, which he had learned as a student with the Curies. He used quartz crystals and vacuum tube amplifiers, which were also used with early medical ultrasonic transducers. This was considered the first ultrasonic device. This research was not completed in time to be applied to the war effort. However, it did form the basis of sound navigation ranging (SONAR) detection, which was further developed during the Second World War.1,2

Rayleigh revisited

John William Strutt, better known as Lord Rayleigh, was born 150 years ago. Although Rayleigh was variously a professor at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and the Royal Institution in London, he performed most of his experiments at Terling Place, the Strutt family home near Chelmsford in Essex. Following Rayleigh's death in 1919, his son Robin (christened Robert John Strutt – the Fourth Baron Rayleigh), resigned his chair in physics at Imperial College, London, and continued his research in the laboratories at Terling Place. Robin was a spectroscopist with a particular interest in atmospheric phenomena, such as the aurora and the brightness of the night sky. He died in 1947 and the laboratories have remained virtually untouched since then.

Rayleigh centennial

This brief sketch of the contributions of the fourth Baron Rayleigh is intended to supplement the biographical material contained in the October 1964 issue of Applied Optics.

Life of John William Strutt Third Baron Rayleigh, O.M., F.R.S.Robert John Strutt

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsLife of John William Strutt Third Baron Rayleigh, O.M., F.R.S. Robert John Strutt J. Brookes SpencerJ. Brookes Spencer Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 62, Number 1Spring, 1971 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/350723 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1971 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Keith A. Kvenvolden Criteria for distinguishing biogenic and abiogenic amino acids — Preliminary considerations, Space Life Sciences 4, no.11 (Jan 1973): 60–68.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02626342

Book Reviews

AbstractHistorical and Critical Essays.The Emergence of the Eastern World.The Family in Classical Greece.The War at Troy.Contours of the Middle Ages.The Life of Francesco Guicciardini.The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, the Reformation and Social Change.A Manual of Siegcraft and Fortification.The French Enlightenment and the Jews.The History of Germany Since 1789.Raspail, Scientist and Reformer.The Tragic Week: A Study of Anticlericalism in Spain, 1875‐1912.Franco, The Man and His Nation.A History of Sweden.Essays in Swedish History.The Early Fasas. A History of Sweden, 1523‐1611.Russia and the Outbreak of the Seven Years' War.The Peasant in Nineteenth‐Century Russia.The Origin of Forced Labor in the Soviet State, 1917‐1921.Stalin, Hitler, and Europe: The Origins of World War 11, 1933‐1939.English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth CenturyThe Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Later Middle Ages.Henry VIII.Charles II's Escape from Worcester. A Collection of Narratives Assembled by Samuel Pepys.The Later Correspondence of George III. Volume IV, 1802‐1807.William Stubbs on the English Constitution.Life of John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh O.M., F.RS.Celts, Catholics and Copperheads; Ireland Views the American Civil War.Anti‐Catholicism in Victorian England.Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1894‐1914.Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840‐1861: The Impact of the Tanzimat on Politics and Society.Travels in Ethiopia.Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919‐1950.They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South‐West Pacific, 1830‐1865.James Truslow Adams, Historian of the American Dream.Reinterpretation in American Church History.The Americans and the French.The Antinomian Controversy, 1636‐1638: A Documentary History.A Rope of Sand, The Colonial Agents, British Politics, and the American Revolution.Attack on Quebec: The American Invasion of Canada, 1775.The Philosophy of the American Constitution.Origins of the Fifth Amendment.Mirror For Americans. Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard. 1810.Most Uncommon Jacksontans: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement.The Papers of Andrew Johnson.History of the Second Seminole War, 1835‐1842.William Montague Browne: Versatile Anglo‐Irish American, 1823‐1881.The Gettysburg Campaign, A Study in Command.Presidential Reconstruction in Mississippi.The World of Andrew Carnegie: 1865‐1901.The Emergence of the New South, 1913‐1945.Progressive Politics and Conservation: The Ballinger‐Pinchot Affair.From Prague After Munich: Diplomatic Papers, 1938‐1940.The Faces of Power: Constancy and Change in United States Foreign Policy from Truman to Johnson.Drafted or Deferred: Practices Past and Present.The Supreme Court and Political Freedom.The Supreme Court and Administrative Agencies.The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru.Brazil: The Land and People.Why Perón Came to Power. The Background to Peranum in Argentina.

Father and Son

Life of John William Strutt Third Baron Rayleigh, OM, FRS. By Robert John Strutt, Fourth Baron Rayleigh. Pp. xxvi + 439. (University of Wisconsin Press: Madison and London, 1968.) $10.

Computational Aspects of Three-Term Recurrence Relations

Computational Aspects of Three-Term Recurrence Relations

The Optics Papers of John W Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh

Get PDF Email Share Share with Facebook Tweet This Post on reddit Share with LinkedIn Add to CiteULike Add to Mendeley Add to BibSonomy Get Citation Copy Citation Text John N. Howard, "The Optics Papers of John W. Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh," Appl. Opt. 3, 1102-1104 (1964) Export Citation BibTex Endnote (RIS) HTML Plain Text Citation alert Save article

John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh

This paper presents a sketch of the life and principal scientific contributions of Lord Rayleigh, with emphasis on his research in optics.

The Optics Research of Robert John Strutt, fourth Baron Rayleigh

The research of Lord Rayleigh pertaining to optics is summarized. Major topics discussed are his research on active nitrogen (the Lewis-Rayleigh afterglow), and luminous glows in other gases and vapors; his identification of ozone in the earth’s atmosphere; and his pioneering work on the night airglow and auroral phenomena.

The Optics Papers of Robert John Strutt, fourth Baron Rayleigh

Get PDF Email Share Share with Facebook Tweet This Post on reddit Share with LinkedIn Add to CiteULike Add to Mendeley Add to BibSonomy Get Citation Copy Citation Text Charles R. Strutt, "The Optics Papers of Robert John Strutt, fourth Baron Rayleigh," Appl. Opt. 3, 1116-1119 (1964) Export Citation BibTex Endnote (RIS) HTML Plain Text Citation alert Save article

Lord Rayleigh, 1875 - 1947

Robert John Strutt, fourth Baron Rayleigh, was born on 28 August 1875. Already well known in the world of science as R. J. Strutt, he succeeded to the title on the death of his distinguished father in 1919. He himself wrote the life of John William Strutt, O.M., F.R.S., the third Baron, and in that biography there is much to be found about the family history. It is sufficient therefore in this notice to refer to a few of the main facts. His mother was Evelyn Georgina Mary, daughter of James Maitland Balfour of Whittingehame, East Lothian; she was a sister of Arthur James Balfour, F.R.S. (Prime Minister, 1902-1905) and a niece of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, F.R.S. (Prime Minister, 1885, 1886, 1895); her mother, Lady Blanche Cecil, was Lord Salisbury’s sister. His uncle on his mother’s side was Francis Maitland Balfour, F.R.S., and his aunt, Eleanor Mildred, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and wife of Professor Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University. Several uncles on his father’s side were distinguished agriculturists, C. H. Strutt, M.P. for Maldon, was a pioneer in tropical agriculture, and E. G. Strutt, C.H., well known for his influence on large-scale dairy farming; another, R. Strutt, was also an authority on tropical agriculture. The Strutts were descended from John Strutt ( d. 1694), a mill owner of Moulsham, Chelmsford. There had been a succession of stalwart forbears, who had been members of parliament and leaders in the county. His grandfather was a stoutly religious English gentleman, and his grandmother (Clara Elizabeth) was daughter of Richard Vicars, R.E. Whether it was the austere wisdom of the father, or the instincts engendered by military science of the mother, their son, the third Baron, had all the attributes of genius. Could it have been because he tumbled downstairs and was badly bruised in the head as a baby of twenty months? Who other than a genius could have written the Theory of Sound (or much of it), on board a ‘dahabeah’ on the Nile?

XXXII.The perfection of crystal laminæ

Summary Reference is made to experiments of the third Baron Rayleigh and others on the perfection of the surfaces and uniformity of the effective thickness of cleavage laminæ of actual crystals. Laminæ of muscovite of about 1/100 mm. in thickness are tested by examining the banded spectrum of white light that has been reflected at the mica. (By using plane polarized light it is possible to make a biaxal crystal act as if it were isotropic.) Formulæ are derived for the resolution obtained at nearly grazing incidence, and the formulæ agree with experiment. The measurements of the thickness of the mica have an absolute error of about ±2 × 10-8 cm., together with an uncertainty common to them all of about 1/40 per cent. It is shown that the mica lamina consists of several portions of different thickness, each of which is certainly uniform in effective thickness to 8 × 10-8 cm., and probably to 2 × 10-8 cm. or less. The stringency of the test is from 50 to 100 times that of the third Baron Rayleigh's experiments. If the different thicknesses are all integral multiples of the length of the unit cell of muscovite, it is shown that the length of the unit cell must be less than (23·4 ±3·1) × 10-8 cm.: a length of unit cell of (19·84±0·06) × 10-8 cm. is indicated, but not uniquely determined.

John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh, O.M., FRS, Sometime President of the Royal Society and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge

LORD RAYLEIGH has completed a very difficult task with great success; he has written a life of his father which has the intimacy which only near relationship could give, combined with a frankness which leaves the conviction that he has shown true filial piety by omitting nothing that would help to make his portrait of a very great man true to life. He says in the preface that it has been his aim not so much to give an account of his father's scientific work as to depict him as a man. He tells us about his father's boyhood how he went first to Eton and then after an interval to Harrow; bad health, however, prevented him from staying more than a term or two at either. The greater part of his school education was at Mr. Warner's, a well-known private school at Torquay, a school by the way where no unmarried lady of less than sixty years of age was to be mentioned at the dinner table. The love for a joke, which Rayleigh never lost, began soon, for we find from a letter written at school that he and another boy invented a language which they called Russian, and set the smaller boys at work learning the declensions. The mathematical teaching at Warner's seems to have been good, and Rayleigh remained there until within a few months of going up to Trinity College, Cambridge. As a boy he was very fond of photography, which he began at about the time when he went to Warner's, and he often in after life declared that he owed much to the practice he got in manipulation with the old wet collodion process. John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh, O.M., F.R.S., Sometime President of the Royal Society and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. By his Son, Robert John Strutt, Fourth Baron Rayleigh. Pp. xi + 403 + 5 plates. (London: E. Arnold and Co., 1924.) 25s. net.

The life of John William Strutt, third baron rayleigh. By his son, R. J. Strutt, Fouorth Baron Rayleigh. Pp. xi+403. London: E. Arnold & Co., 1924. Price 25s

The life of John William Strutt, third baron rayleigh. By his son, R. J. Strutt, Fouorth Baron Rayleigh. Pp. xi+403. London: E. Arnold & Co., 1924. Price 25s

Lord Rayleigh, O.M., F.R.S

JOHN WILLIAM STRUTT, third Baron Rayleigh, was born in Essex on November 12, 1842, and succeeded his father in the title in 1873. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his degree as Senior Wrangler in 1865. His immediate neighbours in the Tripos list were Prof. Alfred Marshall and Mr. H. M. Taylor. The same year he obtained the first Smith's prize, and in 1866 became a fellow of his college. He married Evelyn, daughter of Mr. James Maitland Balfour, of Whittingehame, and sister of Mr. A. J. Balfour, the Foreign Secretary. Of his four sons two survive him—Robert, now professor of physics in the Imperial College of Technology, who succeeds to the title; and Arthur, who for a great part of the war was navigating officer on the flagship of the ist Battle Squadron. They, with their mother, were present at their father's funeral, which took place at Terling on Friday last.

Lord Rayleigh, O.M., F.R.S

IT is now nearly sixty years since the Hon. J. W. Strutt, eldest son of the second Baron Rayleigh, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, to study for the Mathematical Tripos. The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, G. G. Stokes, was at the time engaged in working out the laws of fluorescence and in writing his report on “Double Refraction”for the British Association; Prof. W. Thomson, of Glasgow, had published his great paper on “The Dynamical Theory of Heat”; Prof. J. C. Maxwell, of King's College, London, was writing those fundamental papers on “Electrodynamics” which were incorporated in his “Electricity and Magnetism”; and Balfour Stewart, of the Kew Observatory, had laid the foundations for the modern laws of radiation. The new undergraduate became Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman in 1865, and next year was elected to a fellowship. His first scientific paper, published in 1869, illustrated electro-dynamic laws by comparison with those of mechanical models, a method much used by Maxwell in his own papers. Next year his paper on “Resonance” appeared, and this was the forerunner of a long series of experimental and theoretical papers on vibrations in general, which, when embodied in his “Theory of Sound,” made that work unique.