[ 427 ] 



LORD RAYLEIGH. 



By the decease of Lord Rayleigh on June 30 the outstanding 

 figure in British theoretical physics, and indeed in the 

 physical science of the world, has been removed from us ; 

 and it is fitting that the Philosophical Magazine, in which so 

 much of his work first appeared, should take note of the loss. 

 In an age when the majority of successful workers have to 

 be specialists, his outlook was universal. There is perhaps 

 no special popular discovery attached to his name : the 

 detection of argon, which immediately led on in other hands 

 to the detection of the other inert atmospheric gases, was an 

 incident which occurred naturally in his stride. But he 

 enjoyed to the full the higher privilege of the greatest 

 minds, in moulding the scientific thought of his age. He 

 has been eminently the instructor of his generation. His 

 works have been largely the material on which the scientific 

 tastes and capacities of the younger theoretical physicists 

 have been formed and tested. They carry on the same 

 tradition of means adapted to the end in view, of the quest 

 of what is practicable and the avoidance of inconclusive 

 issues, that has ever been characteristic of his nation, which 

 maintained reasoned physical science on a high plane even 

 in the days when mathematical analysis was in stagnation. 



The 7 heory of Sound, and the Collected Papers in six 

 coherent volumes, will constitute an enduring landmark in 

 British physical science. No writer of such fertility, perhaps 

 of any time, can stand so well the ordeal of complete re- 

 publication of all his work. No such Collection has been so 

 influential on the higher education of the men of science of 

 the age to which it belongs. It has been the great antidote 

 to undue specialization in mathematical physics. To reach 

 anything comparable in extent, solidity, and concise sus- 

 tained thought one has perhaps to go back to the days of 

 Laplace and Young. Along with Kelvin, Helmholtz, and 



