John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh (1842-1919) was an English physicist best known as the co-discoverer of the element argon, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904. Rayleigh graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1865 and after conducting private research was appointed Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics in 1879, a post which he held until 1884. These highly influential volumes, first published between 1877...