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Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
(12 Nov 1842 - 30 Jun 1919)
English physical scientist , 3rd Baron of Rayleigh, was an who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904.
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Science Quotes by Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh (8 quotes)
...I may say that in my opinion true Science and true Religion neither are nor could be opposed.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
Quoted in James Joseph Walsh, Religion and Health (1920), 15 .
Examples ... show how difficult it often is for an experimenter to interpret his results without the aid of mathematics.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
Quoted in E. T. Bell, Men of Mathematics, xvi.
I want to get back again from Chemistry to Physics as soon as I can. The second-rate men seem to know their place so much better.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
R. J. Strutt, John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh (1924), 222.
In the mathematical investigations I have usually employed such methods as present themselves naturally to a physicist. The pure mathematician will complain, and (it must be confessed) sometimes with justice, of deficient rigour. But to this question there are two sides. For, however important it may be to maintain a uniformly high standard in pure mathematics, the physicist may occasionally do well to rest content with arguments which are fairly satisfactory and conclusive from his point of view. To his mind, exercised in a different order of ideas, the more severe procedure of the pure mathematician may appear not more but less demonstrative. And further, in many cases of difficulty to insist upon the highest standard would mean the exclusion of the subject altogether in view of the space that would be required.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
In Preface to second edition, The Theory of Sound (1894), Vol. 1, vii.
One's instinct is at first to try and get rid of a discrepancy, but I believe that experience shows such an endeavour to be a mistake. What one ought to do is to magnify a small discrepancy with a view to finding out the explanation.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
General Monthly Meeting, on Argon, (1 Apr 1895), Proceedings of the Royal Institution (1895), 14, 525.
Some proofs command assent. Others woo and charm the intellect. They evoke delight and an overpowering desire to say, 'Amen, Amen'.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
Quoted in H. E. Hunter, The Divine Proportion (1970), 6; but with no footnote identifying primary source.
The history of science teaches only too plainly the lesson that no single method is absolutely to be relied upon, that sources of error lurk where they are least expected, and that they may escape the notice of the most experienced and conscientious worker.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
Transactions of the Sections', Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1883), 438.
The history of this paper suggests that highly speculative investigations, especially by an unknown author, are best brought before the world through some other channel than a scientific society, which naturally hesitates to admit into its printed records matters of uncertain value. Perhaps one may go further and say that a young author who believes himself capable of great things would usually do well to secure the favourable recognition of the scientific world by work whose scope is limited and whose value is easily judged, before embarking upon higher flights.
— Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh
'On the Physics of Media that are Composed of Free and Perfectly Elastic Molecules in a State of Motion', Philosophical Transactions (1892), 183, 560.
Quotes by others about Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh (1)
The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions. As instances of such discoveries, which are in most cases due to the increasing order of accuracy made possible by improvements in measuring instruments, may be mentioned: first, the departure of actual gases from the simple laws of the so-called perfect gas, one of the practical results being the liquefaction of air and all known gases; second, the discovery of the velocity of light by astronomical means, depending on the accuracy of telescopes and of astronomical clocks; third, the determination of distances of stars and the orbits of double stars, which depend on measurements of the order of accuracy of one-tenth of a second-an angle which may be represented as that which a pin's head subtends at a distance of a mile. But perhaps the most striking of such instances are the discovery of a new planet or observations of the small irregularities noticed by Leverrier in the motions of the planet Uranus, and the more recent brilliant discovery by Lord Rayleigh of a new element in the atmosphere through the minute but unexplained anomalies found in weighing a given volume of nitrogen. Many other instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that “our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”
In Light Waves and Their Uses (1903), 23-4. Michelson had some years earlier referenced “an eminent physicist” that he did not name who had “remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals,” near the end of his Convocation Address at the Dedication of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, 'Some of the Objects and Methods of Physical Science' (4 Jul 1894), published in University of Chicago Quarterly Calendar (Aug 1894), 3, No.2, 15. Also
See also:
- 12 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Rayleigh's birth.