At the age of 20, he entered Trinity College of Cambridge University and graduated with honors three years later. In the second year after graduation, he was elected as a researcher at Trinity College. He has outstanding talent in theory and experiment, and his research work covers almost all fields of classical physics at that time.
He has many books and more than 400 papers. 1873 was elected as a member of the royal society, 1879 ~ 1884 was appointed as the director of Cavendish laboratory; 1885- 1896 as secretary of the royal society, 1905- 1908 as president. 1908 President of Cambridge University.
Rayleigh's research work began with electricity, and later he studied more acoustics and optics, such as resonance theory in acoustics.
From 1877 to 1878, he wrote two volumes of scientific classics, Principles of Acoustics, which laid the foundation of modern acoustics. He theoretically explained "why the sky is blue" and deduced the molecular scattering formula (Rayleigh scattering law, see light scattering). He made an experimental study on grating resolution and diffraction, and was the first to give a clear definition of optical instrument resolution, which played an important role in the study of spectroscopy.
He measured the density of gas accurately for the first time. In 1895, he found that the density difference between nitrogen fractionated from liquid air and nitrogen separated from ammonium nitrite was very small. This fact led to the discovery of argon, a rare element in the air, and won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics.