Compton, Arthur Holly (1892–1962)
American physicist who discovered the Compton
effect (1923), thus providing evidence that X-rays
could act as particles as predicted by quantum theory. Compton found that
when monochromatic X-rays were scattered by light elements, some of the
scattered radiation was of longer wavelength,
i.e., of lower energy than the incident. Compton showed that this could
be explained in terms of the collision between an X-ray photon
and an electron in the target. For this
work he shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with C. T. R. Wilson.
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