Louis de Broglie was a French physicist, most famous for his theories on what would become known as wave
mechanics.
De Broglie was born Louis Victor Pierre Raymond duc de Broglie to Victor, Duc de Broglie and Pauline d'Armaillé, in
Dieppe, France on 1892-08-15 and died in Paris on 1987-03-19.
For a really comprehensive bio of De Broglie, as well as his nobel lecture in pdf and his nobel banquet speech, see
reference 1
De Broglie's work in physics:
"As in my conversations with my brother we always arrived at the conclusion that in the case of X-rays one
had both waves and corpuscles, thus suddenly ... I got the idea that one had to extend this duality to material particles,
especially to electrons. And I realised that, on the one hand, the Hamilton-Jacobi theory pointed somewhat in that
direction, for it can be applied to particles and, in addition, it represents a geometrical optics; on the other hand, in
quantum phenomena one obtains quantum numbers, which are rarely found in mechanics but occur very frequently in
wave phenomena and in all problems dealing with wave motion."
De Broglie, 1963
This notion of extending the observed wave/particle duality of photons to include all particles is what
De Broglie is remembered for . The first mention of the theory was presented as a note found in Comptes rendus, 1923.
(Reference 2) His thesis "Recherches sur la Théorie des Quanta", ("Research on the Quantum Theory") for which he was
awarded his PhD in 1924, included a more detailed explanation of the theory in the first chapter.
In his work, De Broglie derived the relation for the energy of a photon, νh=E=mc2,
giving λ=h/mc
Where E is energy, ν is frequency, h is Planck's constant, m is relativistic mass, c is the speed of
light and λ is the associated wavelength. He then extended this, by intuitive analogy, to apply
to all particles. This produced what is now known as De Broglie's
Relation: λ=h/p
Where p is the particle's momentum.
The theory was not taken seriously by the scientific community at first, but made its way into the hands of Albert
Einstein who both read and built upon De Broglie's work. This in turn caught Erwin Schrodinger's eye, and it inspired him
to begin work which resulted in wave mechanics.
De Broglie's work also explained Bohr's
assumption about the angular momentum of electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus. This explanation is based upon the
fact that if an electron is a wave, it would have to arrange itself about the nucleus in such a way as to reinforce itself and not
create destructive interference.
It was the verification by C J Davisson & Lester Germer in the United States and George Thomson in Scotland of
the wave nature of the electron (through experiments in electron diffraction by crystals) in 1927 that validated his
theory. This final vindication ultimately won him the Nobel prize in physics in 1929 "for his discovery of the wave nature of
electrons".
"He might not deserve his Ph.D., but you should at least give him a Nobel Prize."
Albert Einstein (from metafist's deleted node.)
References
- Nobel eMuseum - http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1929/press.html
- Comptes Rendus Note - Vol. 177, 1923, pp. 507-510 -
http://www.davis-inc.com/physics/broglie/broglie.shtml
- Brittanica Nobel Prize - http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/87_61.html
Sections of my old article lie beneath... really needs significant manipulation to be any good.
Relativistic theory predicts that setting this particle in motion increases its relativistic energy, tending to infinity
as we approach 'c'.
This increase in energy will cause time dilation which will increase the period and thus decrease the frequency of the
wave nature of that particle. (they are inversely proportional)
A look at equation 1 will reveal that something wicked this way comes. From equation 1 the decrease in frequency
should correlate to a decrease, not an increase in energy.
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