LIFE OF JOHN WILLIAM STRUTT,
THIRD BARON RAYLEIGH, O. M.
Sometime President of the Royal Society and Chancellor of
the University of Cambridge.
By his Son, ROBERT JOHN STRUTT, FOURTH BARON
RAYLEIGH, F. R. S.
Late Fellow or Trinity College, Cambridge.
One Volume. Demy 8 vo. With Portraits. 25 s. net.
In writing this book, Lord Rayleigh’s aim has been not so much to give an account of his father’s scientific work as to depict him as a man. The narrative would, however, be without substance if his scientific career was not made its guiding thread. In the selection of topics, it was clearly impossible to refer to more than a small fraction of the papers in the six large volumes of his collected writings. The topics have been chosen for their comparative simplicity and for their bearing on the external circumstances of his life. Many investigations of epoch-making importance have necessarily been left unnoticed. But it is hoped that some others have been brought within the reach of readers who would be repelled by the severely technical form of the original account.
Lord Rayleigh’s friends included the most eminent men of his day in the spheres that appealed to him: among those who figure in these pages are Dr. Routh, Charles Darwin, Clerk Maxwell, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, Lord Balfour, Lord Kelvin, Mrs. Sidgwick, Joseph Chamberlain, Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir J. Larmor and many others. In his later years Lord Rayleigh amused himself by making a collection of humorous stories and anecdotes, and though some of them may be familiar, it has been thought worth while reprinting the collection in an Appendix.
