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 crystal diffraction with electrons.
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 were established three decades earlier
by his own father, J.J. Thomson
(1856-1940; Nobel 1906).
