Clinton Davisson

Clinton Joseph Davisson (October 22, 1881 – February 1, 1958) was an American experimental physicist who shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics with George Paget Thomson "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals."

Biography

Clinton Joseph Davisson was born on October 22, 1881, in Bloomington, Illinois, the son of Joseph Davisson, an artisan from Ohio, and Mary Calvert, a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania.

Davisson graduated from Bloomington High School in 1902, and entered the University of Chicago on scholarship. Upon the recommendation of Robert Millikan, he was hired by Princeton University in 1905 as an instructor in physics. He completed the requirements for his B.S. from Chicago in 1908, mainly by working in the summers. While teaching at Princeton, he did doctoral research under Owen Richardson, receiving his Ph.D. in 1911 with a thesis titled On The Thermal Emission of Positive Ions From Alkaline Earth Salts.

Davisson died on February 1, 1958, in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the age of 76.

Davisson–Germer experiment

thumb|Davisson (left) and [[Lester Germer, 1927]]

Diffraction is a characteristic effect when a wave is incident upon an aperture or a grating, and is closely associated with the meaning of wave motion itself. In the 19th century, diffraction was well-established for light and for ripples on the surfaces of fluids.

In 1927, Davisson and his Bell Labs colleague, Lester Germer, performed an experiment showing that electrons were diffracted at the surface of a crystal of nickel. This work confirmed the de Broglie hypothesis that particles of matter have a wave-like nature, which is a central tenet of quantum mechanics. In particular, their observation of diffraction allowed the first measurement of a wavelength for electrons. The measured wavelength <math>\lambda</math> agreed well with de Broglie's equation <math>\lambda = h/p</math>, where <math> h </math> is the Planck constant and <math> p </math> is the electron's momentum.

Family

While doing his graduate work at Princeton, Davisson met his future wife, Charlotte Sara Richardson, who was visiting her brother (and his doctoral advisor), Professor Owen Richardson. Charlotte was the sister-in-law of Oswald Veblen, a prominent mathematician. Clinton and Charlotte (d. 1984) married in 1911 and had four children: Owen; James; Richard, who became a physicist; and Elizabeth.

Recognition

Awards

{| class="wikitable"

! Year

! Organization

! Award

! Citation

| 1928

| National Academy of Sciences

| Comstock Prize in Physics

| "In recognition of his experimental work demonstrating that under certain conditions, electrons behave as we would expect trains of waves to behave."

| 1931

| Franklin Institute

| Elliott Cresson Medal

| "For the scattering and diffraction of electrons by crystals."

| 1935

| Royal Society

| Hughes Medal

| "For his research that resulted in the discovery of the physical existence of electron waves through long-continued investigations on the reflection of electrons from the crystal planes of nickel and other metals."

| 1937

| Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

| Nobel Prize in Physics

| "For their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals."

| 1929

| American Academy of Arts and Sciences

| Member