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Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh FRS was a British peer and physicist. He discovered "active nitrogen", was the first to distinguish the glow of the night sky.
He was born at Terling Place, the family home near Witham, Essex, the eldest son of John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh and his wife Evelyn Georgiana Mary. He was thus a nephew of Arthur Balfour and of Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he initially read mathematics, but changed after two terms to Natural Sciences. He became a research student in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory under J. J. Thomson, whose biography he subsequently wrote. His work at this time was on discharge of electricity through gases, including early work on x-rays and electrons. He wrote one of the first books on radioactivity, The Becquerel rays and the properties of radium. He was awarded the Coutts Trotter studentship in 1898 and was a Fellow of Trinity College 1900–1906.
Strutt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May, 1905 when his candidature citation read: "Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. As one who has made discoveries in Physics and as the author of the following papers: – 'On the Least Potential Difference required to Produce Discharge through Various Gases'; 'The Dispersion of the Cathode Rays by Magnetic Gases'; 'The Discharge of Electricity through Argon and helium'; 'The Behaviour of Becquerel and Rontgen Rays in a Magnetic Field'; 'The Conductivity of Gases under Becquerel Rays'; 'The Tendency of the Atomic Weights to Approximate to Whole Numbers'; 'The Discharge of Positive Electrification by Hot Metals'; 'Electrical Conductivity of Metals and their Vapours'; 'Some Recent Investigations on Electrical Conduction'; 'Preparation and Properties of an Intensely Radio-active Gas from Metallic Mercury'; 'Radio-activity of Ordinary Materials'; 'Absorption of Light by Mercury and its Vapour'; 'The Intensely Penetrating Rays of radium'; 'Fluorescence of Crystals under Rontgen Rays'; 'An Experiment to Exhibit the Loss of Negative Electricity by Radium'.. He delivered their Bakerian Lecture in 1911 and 1919.
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