The Prince de Broglie
Berget, Alphonse
THE PRINCE DE BROGUE By ALPHONSE BERGET (News that the Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie, a young French scientist whose researches in the nature of light...
...DURING 1924 the faculty of science of the Sor- bonne listened to a young physicist, the Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie, defend his doctoral thesis with logic and remarkable brilliance...
...Becquerel had investigated radioactivity, the brilliant corollary of which Curie found two years later...
...And so we understand why, under these conditions, an atom in a state of repose does not emit light...
...Comparing the production and propagation of light to the production and propagation of sound, he described the luminous body as "vibrating" in the manner of the sonorous body...
...This-a meagre skeleton outline-may serve to indicate the theory of Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie, which reconciles with remarkable skill the theory of undulations (abidingly correct) with the theory of emissions (never incorrect...
...In several respects the award is a definitive recognition of what a number of French investigators have unearthed regarding one of the most baffling among all the problems of physics...
...The wave which it carries therefore congeals and becomes a "stationary wave...
...When these particles strike the human eye, Newton declared, they produce the common sensation of luminosity...
...Its importance has won the Nobel Prize for its author, who receives this award at an age when other scientists, even though they be men of established reputations, do not dream of hoping that it will come to them in the future...
...The question of the nature of light has always been a fascinating puzzle to the human spirit, and the philosophers of all ages have devoted lengthy dissertations to it...
...It must suffice here to enumerate the essential principles of his discovery...
...The Prince de Broglie may likewise lay claim to other titles of distinction...
...His older brother, the Due de Broglie, is a member of the Academy of Sciences and has earned a reputation for researches in the action of the X-ray...
...And one is grateful, in this age of unrestrainable demagogues, for the opportunity to see once again that a descendant of a noble family can achieve distinction in the scientific world-which declaiming politicians had declared closed to all who hold traditional beliefs...
...When an electron, centre of a series of waves, is affixed to an atom and is as a consequence no longer "free," it describes around that atom a microscopic orbit...
...Thus he is a "complete man" in every sense, after the fashion of many of our great savants...
...Throughout the whole of the nineteenth century this theory was held as an article of faith until the time when Young, the English physicist, proved through a famous experiment with "interferences" that under certain conditions the addition of light to light can produce obscurity...
...This introduced a new uncertainty into the realm of radiation...
...On the other hand it is known that incandescent bodies, such as the filaments of our electric lights, irradiate, lance into all directions, myriads of tiny electrified granules-the electrons-which are, so to speak, the infinitesmally small planets in those reductions of the solar system which we term the atoms...
...Recent experiments with the structure of light reveal that this light is, as Newton thought, granular in structure...
...Therefore the undulations which successively follow one another in groups are found to be, in reality, tiny material particles...
...A dense fog that had beclouded the horizon of science (and particularly the science of light) in a disquieting manner was here lifted by a sudden flash of genius which had profited and developed by hard work...
...During 1896, however, a disturbing discovery was made by Henri Becquerel, a justly renowned French scientist who was perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences...
...More specifically regarded, it is fresh proof that fidelity to religious beliefs is not incompatible with the keenest determination to study the laws of nature...
...Four members of his family were elected to the Academie Frangaise...
...But an electron is nothing else than a "system of waves" in "movement...
...THE PRINCE DE BROGUE By ALPHONSE BERGET (News that the Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie, a young French scientist whose researches in the nature of light have attracted universal attention, is of great interest...
...Experiments bearing upon the constitution of light show that this is comprised of waves, but that these waves are emitted in successive groups and in a discontinuous manner...
...The great discoverer of the law of gravitation thought that light was composed of unbelievably small particles, emitted by bodies and propelled by them, at incredible speed, in all directions...
...It needed the genius of Isaac Newton to advance the first explanation that seemed adequate...
...By studying the phenomena furnished by radioactive bodies, it was learned that these actually do emit material particles, the "trains" of which science has even been able to photograph...
...Thus there was born the theory of undulations...
...The Prince himself had begun his career as a student of history, and in this field proved himself a brilliant scholar...
...His thesis created a sensation among scientists not only in France but throughout the world as well...
...But since most of them based their arguments on words rather than on facts, their dialectic proved futile and infertile...
...This reconciliation has now become famous the world over...
...Developed with the mathematicalcare required in such cases, it proved fecund and remained sovereign in the science of light until the nineteenth century came to a close...
...The Prince de Broglie, who is a lucid and agreeable writer, set forth the essence of his doctrine in articles published by Le Correspondant, the oldest French Catholic review...
...The Prince was then thirty-two years old...
...Was the theory of undulations to succumb in its turn to a counter-attack by the theory of emissions, resurrected from a long sleep ? The Prince de Broglie supplied the key to the problem and reconciled things which had previously seemed incompatible...
...Once again the justice of the old motto had been demonstrated: noblesse oblige...
...We have, therefore, believed it appropriate to print the following brief commentary on that doctrine, by a well-informed French writer on scientific topics.-The Editors...
...This discovery exploded a bomb under the theory of emissions...
...Then Fresnel appeared on the scene...
...Only the light vibrations are infinitely more rapid, and the medium which transmits them-a medium which is hypothetical, imponderable and yet perfectly elastic- is termed the "ether...
...How could this be explained...
...It was only later on that he transferred his interest to the field of mathematics...
Vol. 11 • January 1930 • No. 11
