The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who explained why the sky is blue: Lord Rayleigh’s legacy

John William Strutt, also known as Lord Rayleigh, was a British scientist who made many contributions to the field of physics. One of his most notable achievements was his discovery of the phenomenon of Rayleigh scattering, which explains why the sky appears blue.

Lord Rayleigh was born in 1842 and studied at Cambridge University, where he graduated with a degree in mathematics. He then went on to study physics, and in 1873, he published a paper on the scattering of light by small particles. This paper, which was published in the Philosophical Magazine, introduced the concept of Rayleigh scattering, which he named after himself (yes, really!)

In this paper, Lord Rayleigh explained how the scattering of light by small particles causes the sky to appear blue. He showed that the intensity of the scattered light depends on the size of the particles and the wavelength of the light, and that blue light is scattered the most because it has the shortest wavelength.

Lord Rayleigh’s work on scattering of light and other areas of physics earned him many awards and accolades, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904. He was also appointed as the President of the Royal Society, which is the UK’s national academy of science.

In addition to his work on scattering of light, Lord Rayleigh made many other contributions to the field of physics. He studied the properties of gases, and discovered the element argon. He also made important contributions to the study of sound and vibrations, and proposed the concept of Rayleigh’s criterion for stability of floating bodies, which is still used today in naval architecture.

Lord Rayleigh’s work on Rayleigh scattering and other areas of physics have had a significant impact on our understanding of the natural world, and his legacy lives on in the continued study and research of these fields.