Physicist — Arthur Holly Compton (Wooster, Ohio, 1892 – Berkeley 1962) was an American physicist, among the leading figures of twentieth-century physics. In 1923 he demonstrated experimentally the effect that bears his name: when X-rays are scattered by electrons, their wavelength increases by a precise amount. This result was the decisive proof that light has a corpuscular nature, behaving as a collection of photons endowed with momentum, and earned Compton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927. During the Second World War he played a leading directorial role in the Manhattan Project, coordinating the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago where the first controlled nuclear chain reaction was achieved.
Fun fact
It was Compton who communicated the success of Fermi’s first nuclear reactor in code, with the famous telephone phrase: ‘The Italian navigator has landed in the new world… the natives were friendly’.
Theories and contributions
- Compton effect — In the scattering of a photon off an electron the wavelength increases: .
- Corpuscular nature of light — Confirms that the photon possesses energy and momentum , supporting wave-particle duality.
Featured in chapters
Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.