Page 55 - 48Fundamentals of Compressible Fluid Mechanics

1.3. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17

til 1871, the year of his marriage. He served for six years as the president of the
government committee on explosives, and from 1896 to 1919 he acted as Scientific
Adviser to Trinity House. He was Lord Lieutenant of Essex from 1892 to 1901.
Lord Rayleigh’s first research was mainly mathematical, concerning op-
tics and vibrating systems, but his later work ranged over almost the whole field of
physics, covering sound, wave theory, color vision, electrodynamics, electromag-
netism, light scattering, flow of liquids, hydrodynamics, density of gases, viscosity,
capillarity, elasticity, and photography. Rayleigh’s later work was concentrated on
electric and magnetic problems. Rayleigh was considered to be an excellent in-
structor. His Theory of Sound was published in two volumes during 1877-1878,
and his other extensive studies are reported in his Scientific Papers, six volumes
issued during 1889-1920. Rayleigh was also a contributer to the Encyclopedia Bri-
tannica. He published 446 papers which, reprinted in his collected works, clearly
show his capacity for understanding everything just a little more deeply than any-
one else. He intervened in debates of the House of Lords only on rare occasions,
never allowing politics to interfere with science. Lord Rayleigh, a Chancellor of
Cambridge University, was a Justice of the Peace and the recipient of honorary
science and law degrees. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1873) and served
as Secretary from 1885 to 1896, and as President from 1905 to 1908. He received
the Nobel Prize in 1904. Lord Rayleigh died on June 30, 1919, at Witham, Essex.
In 1871 he married Evelyn, sister of the future prime minister, the Earl
of Balfour (of the famous Balfour declaration of the Jewish state). They had three
sons, the eldest of whom was to become a professor of physics at the Imperial
College of Science and Technology, London.
As a successor to James Clerk
Maxwell, he was head of the Cavendish
Laboratory at Cambridge from 1879-1884,
and in 1887 became Professor of Natural
Philosophy at the Royal Institute of Great
Britain. Rayleigh died on June 30, 1919 at
Witham, Essex.

1.3.5.4 William John Macquorn Rankine

William John Macquorn Rankine (July 2,
1820 - December 24, 1872) was a Scottish Fig. 1.9: Portrait of Rankine
engineer and physicist. He was a founding
contributor to the science of thermodynam-
ics (Rankine Cycle). Rankine developed a theory of the steam engine. His steam
engine manuals were used for many decades.
Rankine was born in Edinburgh to British Army lieutenant David Rankine
and Barbara Grahame, Rankine.