Louis de Broglie was born in Dieppe, France in 1892, Louis de Broglie grew up in a rich, aristocratic family. He chose to study history after passing out of school in 1909. Broglie soon gained an interest in science and acquired a degree in physics in 1913. During the World War I, he was enlisted in the French Army. He was posted in Eiffel Tower, where he had plenty of time to carry out experiments in radio communications and engineering. After the war, Broglie started working with his brother, Maurice, in his lab.
Most of the work in Maurice’s lab involved X-rays, which made him think about the dual nature of light; more particularly the wave–particle duality. Broglie soon suggested in his thesis for a doctorate degree that matter, also, might behave in a similar manner. When the French Academy became aware of his theory of electron waves, it caught Albert Einstein’s attention, who had high praise for Broglie’s bold ideas. That inspired the birth of wave mechanics.
Broglie’s theory resolved and offered an explanation to a question that was brought up by calculations of the motion of electrons within the atom. It was later independently proved in 1927 by G.P. Thomson and Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer that matter actually could show wave-like characteristics. Louis de Broglie won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics for his amazing work.
Broglie stayed at the Sorbonne after earning his doctorate, being appointed a professor of theoretical physics at the newly-established Henri Poincaré Institute in 1928, where he remained until his retirement in 1962.
Louis de Broglie acted as an adviser to the French Atomic Energy Commissariat after 1945. He won the Kalinga Prize by UNESCO in 1952, and became a foreign member of the British Royal Society, as well as the French Academy of Sciences. Broglie died on March 19, 1987 in Louveciennes, France. He was 94 years old.
Source: famousscientists.org
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