“He wrote about his concern that in coming back here as chancellor, there might be those who would be offended by his wartime work on the Manhattan Project.”įrom 1942 to 1945, Compton directed the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. “And he was empathetic,” Henriksen continues. Most importantly he clearly was willing to alter his preconceptions based on new data. “He was well-educated, but not stuck in the mud. “Compton had a mix of old school approach - jacket and tie every day - and some sort of American ‘can-do’ approach to his work,” Henriksen says.
#COMPTON EFFECT VIDEO SERIES#
Members of the Department of Physics created a display in the lobby at Washington University’s Olin Library, hosted an Assembly Series lecture by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, and offered several Saturday Science Lectures focused on Compton’s life and impact. “The ‘Compton effect’ was instrumental in reinvigorating the stalled-out theoretical attempts to understand a bevy of strange experimental results - which resulted directly in quantum mechanics,” says Erik Henriksen, associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, who helped organize a series of events this year that celebrated the 100-year anniversary of Compton’s groundbreaking research. Some of its collaborators are (from left) Jim Buckley, Patrick Harrington, Henric Krawczynski and Erik Henriksen. The new dilution refrigerator laboratory, a central component of the Center for Quantum Sensors, will help researchers search for new fundamental physics by constructing precision detectors. This provided the first proof that X-rays - formerly thought to be a purely wave-like phenomenon - could also behave as particles, confirming a long-standing but largely ignored prediction by Albert Einstein. By shining X-rays onto graphite blocks, Compton demonstrated that each ray behaved as a particle, conserving both energy and momentum in collisions with electrons in the graphite. It was this discovery for which he was ultimately awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics.Īt the time, the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted. Working in his laboratory in the basement of Eads Hall on the Danforth Campus at WashU, Compton conducted X-ray scattering experiments that demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation.
Before he became chancellor, Compton directed a laboratory that played a key role in the U.S.-led effort to develop the atomic bomb.īut Compton is best-known for a discovery he made 100 years ago, one that paved the way for modern quantum mechanics. Washington University’s ninth chancellor, he was a physicist who played the banjo-mandolin at the annual freshman picnic, and he invented the speed bump ( yes, really). (Washington University Archives)Īrthur Holly Compton (Sept.10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was known for many things during his lifetime. At the time, the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted.
Previously a professor and head of the physics department, Compton conducted X-ray scattering experiments in 1922 that demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. Arthur Holly Compton (playing banjo) was Washington University’s ninth chancellor, serving from 1945-53. His discovery stimulated the development of quantum mechanics and was recognized with the Nobel Prize in 1927. Arthur Holly Compton, WashU’s ninth chancellor, conducted X-ray scattering experiments in 1922 that demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation.
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