Lord Rayleigh (1842 1919) won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1904. His early research was in optics and acoustics but his first published paper, from 1869, was an explanation of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. In 1871, he related the degree of light scattering to wavelength (part of the explanation for why the sky is blue), and in 1872 he wrote his classic Theory of Sound (not included here). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and inherited his father's peerage in 1873. Rayleigh nevertheless continued groundbreaking research, including the first description of Moire interference...

As Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University, Lord Rayleigh focussed his considerable energies on the study of electricity building on the work of his illustrious predecessor, James Clerk Maxwell. This second volume of his papers, covering 1881 7, includes a series of four major contributions from 1881 and 1883 concerning the absolute determination of the ohm. Related reports include the measurement of current, and the electrical properties of various materials. A note from 1884 pessimistically predicts an absolute practical limit of less than 50 miles for a working...

This volume includes papers from 1887, when Lord Rayleigh became Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in London, to 1892. An 1888 contribution on the densities of hydrogen and oxygen led to a series of experiments on the densities of the atmospheric gases. This resulted in the unsettling discovery that the density of atmospheric nitrogen seemed very slightly to exceed the density of nitrogen derived from its chemical compounds. A substantial 1888 paper, on the wave theory of light, was written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the immediate aftermath of the crucial...

This volume of Lord Rayleigh's collected papers begins with a brief 1892 piece in which the author addresses the troubling discrepancies between the apparent density of nitrogen derived from different sources. Intrigued by this anomaly and by earlier observations by Cavendish, Rayleigh investigated whether it might be due to a previously undiscovered atmospheric constituent. This led to Rayleigh's discovery of the chemically inert element, argon, to his 1904 Nobel Prize in physics, and to the discovery of all the 'rare' gases. Debate over the nature of Roentgen rays, is reflected in a short...

The scientific papers, across multiple disciplines, published from 1902 to 1910 by a remarkable Nobel laureate.

The scientific papers, across multiple disciplines, published from 1911 to 1919 by a remarkable Nobel laureate.