Year Awarded: 1904
Year of Discovery: 1894
Lord Rayleigh: 1842 – 1919
The Right Honourable John William Strutt 3rd Baron of Rayleigh OM, PC, PRS. That would fill up a business card. Old Rayleigh’s achievements and contributions to physics would fill up volumes. And his trophy case would have been chock full of various awards and honours. Some guys get lunar craters named after them as did this old boy, but he also got a Martian crater named after him as well….
Rayleigh was a Cambridge man all of his academic life, and held the Cavendish Chair of Physics, along with also serving as Chancellor for a period of time. Additionally he was a fellow, and eventually president of the Royal Society. He studied such diverse things as: the dynamic soaring of seabirds, acoustics, light scattering, lubrication, and the Ultraviolet Catastrophe (sounds like a great band name, but really was one of the early forays into quantum mechanics). And of course he was awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery of Argon.
Like several of his peers of the day he also had a passing interest in the paranormal.
Argon is the third most abundant gas on earth. 18Ar fittingly, is one of the so called Nobel gases. Although interestingly enough, no relation to the name Nobel of the prize we have been discussing in this series. But rather a translation from the German Edelgas.
Impact of discovery:
It turns out that Argon has tons of uses. Who knew? Check this out…
Arc Welding
Processing Titanium
Growing Silicon Crystals
Extinguishing Fires
Asphyxiation of Birds
A food preservative
In Winemaking
A document preservative (Like the American Declaration of Independence)
Gas Chromatography
Scanning Electron Microscopes
Laser Surgery
Geological Dating
Cooling heat seeking missiles
As a propellant for the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket
Window production
And… light bulbs…