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genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

Also in 1923, a French Ph.D. student named Louis Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie* made a radical suggestion: he argued that there ought to be symmetry between light and matter, and so a material particle such as an electron ought to have a wavelength. After all, if light waves behave like particles, shouldn’t particles behave like waves? De Broglie suggested that just as a photon has a momentum determined by its wavelength, a material object like an electron should have a wavelength determined by its momentum: γ = h/p which is just the formula for the momentum of a photon (page 24) turned around to give the wavelength.

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genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

Louis de Broglie’s wave model of the electron provided the missing theoretical basis, but while particle-wave duality justifies the idea of allowed states, it requires us to discard the image of electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets orbiting the sun.

genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

The history of science shows that the progress of science has constantly been hampered by the tyrannical influence of certain conceptions that finally came to be considered as dogma. For this reason, it is proper to submit periodically to a very searching examination, principles that we have come to assume without any more discussion.

genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

Many scientists have tried to make determinism and complementarity the basis of conclusions that seem to me weak and dangerous; for instance, they have used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to bolster up human free will, though his principle, which applies exclusively to the behavior of electrons and is the direct result of microphysical measurement techniques, has nothing to do with human freedom of choice. It is far safer and wiser that the physicist remain on the solid ground of theoretical physics itself and eschew the shifting sands of philosophic extrapolations.

genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

Vulnerable, like all men, to the temptations of arrogance, of which intellectual pride is the worst, he [the scientist] must nevertheless remain sincere and modest, if only because his studies constantly bring home to him that, compared with the gigantic aims of science, his own contribution, no matter how important, is only a drop in the ocean of truth.

genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

Science itself, no matter whether it is the search for truth or merely the need to gain control over the external world, to alleviate suffering, or to prolong life, is ultimately a matter of feeling, or rather, of desire-the desire to know or the desire to realize.

genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

Science itself, no matter whether it is the search for truth or merely the need to gain control over the external world, to alleviate suffering, or to prolong life, is ultimately a matter of feeling, or rather, of desire-the desire to know or the desire to realize.

genius louis de broglie

Louis de Broglie

After long reflection in solitude and meditation, I suddenly had the idea, during the year 1923, that the discovery made by Einstein in 1905 should be generalised by extending it to all material particles and notably to electrons.