Arthur Compton
Arthur Compton was born on September 10, 1892, and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for demonstrating the particle-like nature of electromagnetic radiation. In his experiment, he directed X-rays onto a metallic surface and observed their behavior. He found that the X-rays lost some of their energy (or their wavelength increased) after colliding with the surface. This happened because part of the energy of the X-rays was transferred to the electrons in the material.
This phenomenon later became known as the “Compton Effect”, which proved that photons – the particles that carry light – possess both wave-like and particle-like properties, in agreement with the famous quantum theory of Albert Einstein.
