George Paget Thomson
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031212
Today is the birthday of physicist George Paget Thomson, born in Cambridge, England, in 1892. He was the son of J. J. Thomson, the Nobel laureate who discovered the electron. George was conducting research with his father when World War I broke out. For most of the war he worked on problems dealing with the aerodynamics of British warplanes. His seminal work took place at the University of Aberdeen, where he studied the behavior of electrons moving through thin metal films. Thomson observed that the particles his father discovered also behaved like waves, confirming the hypothesis of French physicist Louis de Broglie. This discovery earned him the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics, which he shared with American physicist Clinton Davisson.
Date in History: 3 May 1892
