Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) French physicist
Duc de Broglie, Prince de Broglie et du Saint-Empire
[Prince then Duke in 1960] Nobel 1929
The above picture
(reproduced here by permission) is from the
Maison
de Broglie page of the superb site
Héraldique européenne.
Copyright © 1997-2007
by Arnaud Bunel. All rights reserved.
Or, a saltire moline Azure.
Crest :
A Swan issuant. Pendant from a ribbon Gules
around its neck, a saltire as in the arms.
Supporters :
Two Lions guardant crowned Or langued Gules.
All within a manteau ermine doubled Or semy of saltires as in the arms.
D'or au sautoir [ alaisé et ] ancré d'azur.
In 1923, Louis de Broglie was still a graduate
student at the Sorbonne when he proposed the idea of
matter waves,
which he defended successfully in 1924 (with the support of Einstein himself)
in front of a doctoral committee which included
Paul Langevin (1872-1946).
At the time,
de Broglie stated that his proposed matter waves might
be observable in experiments involving the diffraction of electrons beams by crystals...
Such experimental confirmations came in 1927, with two independent experiments:
one by Clinton J. Davisson (1881-1958;
Nobel 1937)
and Lester H. Germer (1896-1971), the other by G.P. Thomson (1892-1975;
Nobel 1937)...
Ironically, George Paget Thomson thus demonstrated the undulatory nature of
electrons, whose corpuscular properties had been established three decades earlier
by his own father, J.J. Thomson
(1856-1940; Nobel 1906).
