Clinton Davisson

About

American physicist who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of Electron Diffraction.

Before Fame

After completing his undergraduate education he taught at Princeton, at the same time woking on his doctoral thesis there.

Trivia

In 1919 he took up working with the electrons in researching the theory that they exist both in wave form and in particles, one of the fundamental assumptions of quantum mechanics.

Family Life

He was born in Bloomington, Illinois, and his father Joseph Davisson was a descendant of early Dutch and French settlers of Virginia and a veteran of the Union army in the Civil War.

Associated With

His research pioneered the early science of quantum mechanics, and Erwin Schrodinger's famous cat paradigm brought into popular consciousness.