"There are some great men of science whose charm consists in having said the first word on a subject, in having introduced some new idea which has proved fruitful; there are others whose charm consists perhaps in having said the last word on the subject, and who have reduced the subject to logical consistency and clearness. I think by temperament Lord Rayleigh belonged to the second group."
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Fellows of the Royal SocietyNobel laureates in PhysicsAgnosticsPhysicists from EnglandNobel laureates from England
Original Language: English
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Quoted in Chandrasekhar, Subramanyan. "The pursuit of science." Minerva (1984): 410-420.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Strutt%2C_3rd_Baron_Rayleigh
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John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John William Strutt (12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered the element argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904. He also discovered the phenomenon now called Rayleigh scattering, explaining why the sky is blue, and predicted the existence of the surface waves now known as Rayleigh waves.
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