Arthur Compton

Arthur Compton (1892–1962) was an American physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the wavelength shift of X-rays scattered by electrons.

J. J. Thomson: Joseph John Thomson was a British physicist who discovered the electron and studied its properties. Thomson’s work on electrons formed part of the experimental background to Compton’s scattering studies.
Compton scattering: Compton scattering is the inelastic scattering of a photon by a charged particle, usually an electron, with a change in photon energy. This is the specific interaction whose wavelength shift Compton discovered.
X-ray: X-rays are high-frequency electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than ultraviolet light. Compton measured the wavelengths of X-rays before and after they scattered.
Wave–particle duality: Wave–particle duality is the quantum description in which light and matter exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties. The experiment connected X-ray wave measurements with photon-like collisions.
George Washington Pierce: George Washington Pierce was an American physicist and electrical engineer who taught at Harvard University. Pierce supervised Compton’s doctoral work on the reflection of X-rays from crystals.
Peter Debye: Peter Debye was a Dutch-American physicist who developed theories of molecular structure, X-ray scattering, and diffraction. Debye independently explained the X-ray wavelength shift that Compton reported.
Compton wavelength: The Compton wavelength of a particle is Planck’s constant divided by its mass times the speed of light. The electron’s Compton wavelength sets the scale of the shift in Compton’s experiment.
Classical electromagnetism: Classical electromagnetism describes electric and magnetic fields and their interactions with charged matter. Classical wave theory predicted no angle-dependent wavelength shift from scattering by free electrons.
Quantum mechanics: Quantum mechanics is the theory of matter and radiation at atomic and subatomic scales. Compton’s result helped establish the quantum account of electromagnetic radiation.
Washington University in St. Louis: Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university in Missouri. Compton’s X-ray scattering experiments were carried out there in the early 1920s.

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