Arthur Compton

Claimed by Annabelle Mathis

Arthur Compton was an American physicist most well known for his discovery of the Compton Effect, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927. This discovery established the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation.

Personal Life

Compton was born in Wooster, Ohio on September 10, 1892 to Elias and Otelia Catherine (née Augspurger) Compton. Otelia Catherine was named American Mother of the Year in 1939. Elias was Dean of the University of Wooster, where both Arthur and his two brothers, Karl and Wilson, attended. Compton also had a sister, Mary. In 1916, he married Betty Charity McCloskey, a classmate at Wooster. Together they had two sons, Arthur Alan and John Joseph. Compton was Baptist, serving as a deacon at a Baptist church for a few years. On March 15, 1962, he died in Berkeley, California, due to a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Wooster Cemetery in Wooster, California.

Education

Compton attended the University of Wooster, graduating in 1913 with a Bachelor of Science. From there he continued onto Princeton University where he earned his Master of Arts in 1914 and a PhD in Physics in 1916, writing his dissertation on "The intensity of X-ray reflection, and the distribution of the electrons in atoms".

Career

After earning his PhD, Compton worked as a professor at the University of Minnesota from 1916-17. He, then, was an research engineer for Westinghouse Lamp Company in Pittsburgh. In 1919, he worked with George Paget Thomson at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory in England, studying the scattering and absorption of gamma rays. Upon his return to the US in 1920, Compton took a position at Washington University in St. Louis as Head of the Department of Physics. Here he made his famous discovery of the Compton Effect. He earned the Nobel Prize in Phyics in 1927 for his discovery and work with the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. In 1923, he moved to the University of Chicago, where he was a Professor of Physics, for the following twenty-two years. During World War II, Compton was involved with the Manhattan Project, and was awarded the Medal of Merit for his services. After the end of the war, he returned to Washington University in 1946, where he serves as the university’s ninth Chancellor. He retired from the school in 1961.

Scientific Contributions

Compton Effect

Also know as "Compton Scattering"

While working at Washington University in St. Louis, Compton began conducting research on the scattering of gamma rays and x-rays. In 1922, he found that when x-rays were scattered by electrons, they had longer wavelengths. Compton demonstrated and modeled the data from his research by assuming the particle nature of light. Thus, he was able to apply the principles of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy for the collisions of the x-ray quanta and the electrons that caused the scattering. According to the Planck relationship, the scattered quanta had a lower energy and thus a longer wavelength.

At the time of this discovery, the wave nature of light was fully accepted, but the particle nature was still being disputed. Although the photoelectric effect displayed the particle nature of light, it continued to be a heavily debated topic. However, Compton's experiment gave simple and evident proof of the particle nature of light, helping to end the debate. From this, the dual nature of light became accepted.

Compton Formula

From this discovery, he developed the Compton Formula which quantifies how the change of the wavelength increases with the scattering angle.

λ: initial wavelength

λ': wavelength after scattering

h: Planck constant

m_e: electron rest mass

c: speed of light

θ: scattering angle

Resources

Arthur Compton Nobel Prize Bio

Compton Scattering