840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF LOED EAYLEIGH. 



WE publisli an excellent portrait, this month, of the subject of 

 the present sketch, Professor Lord Rayleigh, President of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held its 

 annual meeting this year at Montreal. 



John William Steutt, Baron Rayleigh, of Ferling Place, Essex, 

 was born November 12, 1842. He had a delicate constitution, which 

 it was feared would render the exposures of the public school danger- 

 ous, and he was accordingly placed under the charge of the Rev. J. T. 

 "Warner, of Torquay. He early developed a fondness for experimental 

 research, and his chief amusement while a youth was photography. 

 In October, 1861, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and was 

 there classed among the " reading-men " by his fellow-students. He 

 took several prizes and an exhibition in the course of his studies, and 

 graduated with distinguished honors, being both senior wrangler and 

 Smith's prizeman. Following the usual custom, when a student of a 

 college has distinguished himself in the final examinations. Trinity 

 College elected him a Fellow. 



In 1871 Mr. Strutt married the second daughter of the late James 

 Balfour, of Whittingham, Scotland, thus losing his fellowship, to 

 which only celibates are eligible. On the 14th of June, 1872, he suc- 

 ceeded to the title, and in the same year was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society, to whose transactions he has contributed many impor- 

 tant papers. The medal of this society was conferred upon him in 

 1882 as a recognition of the importance of his scientific work. In 

 1879, upon the death of Professor Clerk-Maxwell, who had filled the 

 chair since its establishment in 1871, Lord Rayleigh was appointed 

 Professor of Experimental Physics in Cambridge. Since then, he 

 has devoted much of his time to the organization of the magnificent 

 Cavendish Laboratory, the gift of the Duke of Devonshire, chancellor 

 of the university. 



Lord Rayleigh was elected President of the British Association 

 last year at its Southport meeting, and succeeds Professor Arthur 

 Cayley, who is so well known for his devotion to pure mathematics, 

 also in the University of Cambridge. The selection of a lord for the 

 presidency of this body is not without abundant precedent, several 

 distinguished noblemen, as Prince Albert, the Dukes of Argyll and 

 Northumberland, Lord Wrottesley, and others, having occupied the 

 position, which has given rise to the insinuation that this body has a 

 weakness for great titles. But, in the first place, the British Associa- 

 tion is not a republican club, but a body of men wise and practical 

 in their generation, and who know how to adapt means to ends for 

 the successful accomplishment of the objects they have in view. And, 



