472 



NATURE 



[December 8, 192 1 



The follawing members of Lord Rayleigh's 

 family and representatives of the University of 

 Cambridge, the council of the Royal Society and 

 other institutions with which he was connected 

 were among those who were present : — 



The Dowager Lady Rayleigh, Lord and Lady 

 Rayleigh, Mrs. Sidgwick, the Hon. R. Strutt, the 

 Hon. Edward and Mrs. Strutt, the Rt. Hon. 

 G. W. and Lady Betty Balfour, and Mr. E. J. 

 Strutt ; the vice-chancellor of the University of 

 Cambridge, Sir Joseph Larmor, and Mr. J. F. P. 

 Rawlinson, Members of Parliament for the univer- 

 sity ; the president of the Royal Society, Sir 

 J. 'j. Thomson, Sir David Prain, Mr. W. B. 

 Hardy, Mr. Jeans, Sir Arthur Schuster, Prof. 

 Lamb, Sir William Bragg, Prof. Fowler, Prof. 



sum available for the purchase of periodicals, 

 binding, etc., would, in the opinion of both Sir 

 J. J. Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford be of 

 real service and would greatly promote research 

 in physics at Cambridge. 



■ '"t i fH li r i l ii I i f 111 . I i i if 



JOHN WILLIA^ i : OM . PC : 



3"^^ BARON R.\Yi,ElGH 



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p;. 



Memorial tablet of Lord Rayleigh by Prof. Derwent Wood R.A., unveiled in Westminster 

 Abbey on November 30, 



O. W. Richardson, Sir Gerald Lenox Conyngham, 

 members of council of the Royal Society ; and 

 Prof. F. Derwent Wood, Lord South- 

 borough, Sir James Dewar, Sir William 

 McCormick, Sir Charles Parsons, Sir George 

 Beilby, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Maurice Fitz- 

 maurice. Sir Napier Shaw, and Sir Richard 

 Glazebrook. 



In order to promote research in a branch of 



Sir Joseph Thomson's Address. 

 On behalf of the Royal Society and of the Univer- 

 sity of Cambridge it is my privilege to thank the 

 Dean and Chapter of Westminster for permission to 

 erect a memorial to Lord Rayleigh in the Abbey. I 

 desire also to thank the artist, Mr. Derwent Wood, 

 whose skill has made the memorial an excellent like- 

 ness of Lord Rayleigh, and has endowed it with 

 artistic merits which make it worthy of a place on 

 these walls. I desire also to thank the contributors 

 whose generosity has made this memorial possible. I 

 owe my position here this afternoon 

 to the courtesy of the president ofj 

 the Royal Society, and of the vice- 

 chancellor of the University of Cam- 

 bridge. Either of these would have| 

 been a more appropriate representa- 

 tive than myself, but it is their wish 

 that, as chairman of the Committee 

 of the Memorial, I should undertake 

 this duty. It seems fitting that, on 

 this occasion, when we place a; 

 memorial to Lord Rayleigh in 

 building surrounded by memorials of 

 the most illustrious of Englishmen,^ 

 a few words should be said as 

 tribute to his work and in support 

 of his claim to be represented or 

 these walls. Lord Rayleigh devoted 

 a long life with entire singleness of 

 purpose and pre-eminent success to^ 

 the pursuit of what, in the phraseo- 

 logy of the Royal Society, is called 

 •'the promotion of natural know- 

 ledge." For fifty years, without pause 

 and without hurry, he pursued re- 

 searches which are one of the glories 

 of English science. It is possible to 

 form an estimate of the quality and 

 quantity of Lord Rayleigh's work by 

 those six volumes of collected papers 

 which we owe to the enterprise of the 

 Syndics of the Cambridge University 

 Press. Among the 446 papers which 

 fill these volumes there is not one that 

 is trivial, there is not one that does 

 not advance the subject with which it 

 deals, there is not one that does 

 not clear away difficulties ; and among that great 

 number there are scarcely any which tim§ has 

 shown to require correction. It is this, I think, 

 which explains that while the collected papers of 

 scientific men often form a kind of memorial tablet 

 In our libraries, respected but not disturbed, those 

 of Lord Rayleigh are among the most frequently 

 consulted books in the physicist's library. 



The first impression that we gain on looking at 

 these volumes is the catholicity of Lord Rayleigh's 



' d'Arcis 



science in which Lord Rayleigh was interested, it work--mathematics, light Jie^t;. ifau?dT'a^d"'soHdr 

 , , j^u'j iuui \.( tism, the properties of gases, 01 liquids ana soiids- 



has been arranged to hand over the balance of , ^^^ ^^j represented in fairly equal proportions. If I 



were asked to explain In what department of physics 



the fund, some 500I. in amount, to the University 

 of Cambridge to be used as a library fund at the 

 Cavendish Laboratory, where there is a research 

 library to the formation of which Lord Rayleigh 

 contributed when professor. To have an annual 

 , NO. 2719, VOL. 108] 



Lord Rayleigh's work w^as most important I should 

 be quite at a loss to do so. In these days when we 

 speak of electricians, of molecular physicists, elas- 

 tlcians, or even if we take the wider classification 



