John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
![Rayleigh in 1904](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/John_William_Strutt.jpg)
Rayleigh provided the first theoretical treatment of the elastic scattering of light by particles much smaller than the light's wavelength, a phenomenon now known as "Rayleigh scattering", which notably explains why the sky is blue. He studied and described transverse surface waves in solids, now known as "Rayleigh waves". He contributed extensively to fluid dynamics, with concepts such as the Rayleigh number (a dimensionless number associated with natural convection), Rayleigh flow, the Rayleigh–Taylor instability, and Rayleigh's criterion for the stability of Taylor–Couette flow. He also formulated the circulation theory of aerodynamic lift. In optics, Rayleigh proposed a well-known criterion for angular resolution. His derivation of the Rayleigh–Jeans law for classical black-body radiation later played an important role in the birth of quantum mechanics (see ultraviolet catastrophe). Rayleigh's textbook ''The Theory of Sound'' (1877) is still used today by acousticians and engineers. He introduced the Rayleigh test for circular non-uniformity, of which the Rayleigh plot visualizes. Provided by Wikipedia
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