Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a ssational discovery at the time: the wave nature of light had be well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted. He is also known for his leadership over the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago during the Manhattan Project, and served as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1945 to 1953.
In 1919, Compton was awarded one of the first two National Research Council Fellowships that allowed studts to study abroad. He chose to go to the University of Cambridge's Cavdish Laboratory in gland, where he studied the scattering and absorption of gamma rays. Further research along these lines led to the discovery of the Compton effect. He used X-rays to investigate ferromagnetism, concluding that it was a result of the alignmt of electron spins, and studied cosmic rays, discovering that they were made up principally of positively charged particles.
During World War II, Compton was a key figure in the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons. His reports were important in launching the project. In 1942, he became head of the Metallurgical Laboratory, with responsibility for producing nuclear reactors to convert uranium into plutonium, finding ways to separate the plutonium from the uranium and to design an atomic bomb. Compton oversaw rico Fermi's creation of Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor, which wt critical on December 2, 1942. The Metallurgical Laboratory was also responsible for the design and operation of the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tnessee. Plutonium began being produced in the Hanford Site reactors in 1945.
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After the war, Compton became chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. During his ture, the university formally desegregated its undergraduate divisions, named its first female full professor, and rolled a record number of studts after wartime veterans returned to the United States.
They were an academic family. Elias was dean of the University of Wooster (later the College of Wooster), which Arthur also attded. Arthur's eldest brother, Karl, who also attded Wooster, earned a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in physics from Princeton University in 1912, and was presidt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948. His second brother Wilson likewise attded Wooster, earned his PhD in economics from Princeton in 1916 and was presidt of the State College of Washington, later Washington State University from 1944 to 1951.
Around 1913, he described an experimt where an examination of the motion of water in a circular tube demonstrated the rotation of the earth, a device now known as the Compton gerator.
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That year, he graduated from Wooster with a Bachelor of Scice degree and tered Princeton, where he received his Master of Arts degree in 1914.
Compton th studied for his PhD in physics under the supervision of Hereward L. Cooke, writing his dissertation on The Intsity of X-Ray Reflection, and the Distribution of the Electrons in Atoms.
Wh Arthur Compton earned his PhD in 1916, he, Karl and Wilson became the first group of three brothers to earn Ph.D.s from Princeton. Later, they would become the first such trio to simultaneously head American colleges.
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Th two years as a research gineer with the Westinghouse Lamp Company in Pittsburgh, where he worked on the developmt of the sodium-vapor lamp. During World War I he developed aircraft instrumtation for the Signal Corps.
In 1919, Compton was awarded one of the first two National Research Council Fellowships that allowed studts to study abroad. He chose to go to the University of Cambridge's Cavdish Laboratory in gland. Working with George Paget Thomson, the son of J. J. Thomson, Compton studied the scattering and absorption of gamma rays. He observed that the scattered rays were more easily absorbed than the original source.
Compton was greatly impressed by the Cavdish scitists, especially Ernest Rutherford, Charles Galton Darwin and Arthur Eddington, and he ultimately named his second son after J. J. Thomson.
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For a time Compton was a deacon at a Baptist church. "Scice can have no quarrel", he said, "with a religion which postulates a God to whom m are as His childr."
Returning to the United States, Compton was appointed Wayman Crow Professor of Physics, and head of the Departmt of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1920.
In 1922, he found that X-ray quanta scattered by free electrons had longer wavelgths and, in accordance with Planck's relation, less ergy than the incoming X-rays, the surplus ergy having be transferred to the electrons. This discovery, known as the "Compton effect" or "Compton scattering", demonstrated the particle concept of electromagnetic radiation.
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In 1923, Compton published a paper in the Physical Review that explained the X-ray shift by attributing particle-like momtum to photons, something Einstein had invoked for his 1905 Nobel Prize–winning explanation of the photo-electric effect. First postulated by Max Planck in 1900, these were conceptualized as elemts of light "quantized" by containing a specific amount of ergy depding only on the frequcy of the light.
In his paper, Compton derived the mathematical relationship betwe the shift in wavelgth and the scattering angle of the X-rays by assuming that each scattered X-ray photon interacted with only one electron. His paper concludes by reporting on experimts that verified his derived relation:
The quantity h ⁄mec is known as the Compton wavelgth of the electron; it is equal to 2.43× 10−12 m. The wavelgth shift λ′ − λ lies betwe zero (for θ = 0°) and twice the Compton wavelgth of the electron (for θ = 180°).
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He found that some X-rays expericed no wavelgth shift despite being scattered through large angles; in each of these cases the photon failed to eject an electron. Thus the magnitude of the shift is related not to the Compton wavelgth of the electron, but to the Compton wavelgth of the tire atom, which can be upwards of 10, 000 times smaller.
"Wh I prested my results at a meeting of the American Physical Society in 1923", Compton later recalled, "it initiated the most hotly contested scitific controversy that I have ever known."
The wave nature of light had be well demonstrated, and the idea that it could have a dual nature was not easily accepted. It was particularly telling that diffraction in a crystal lattice could only be explained with referce to its wave nature. It earned Compton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927. Compton and Alfred W. Simon developed the method for observing at the same instant individual scattered X-ray photons and the recoil electrons. In Germany, Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger indepdtly developed a similar method.
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In 1925, he demonstrated that the scattering of 130, 000-volt X-rays from the first sixte elemts in the periodic table (hydrog through sulfur) were polarized, a result predicted by J. J. Thomson. William Duane from Harvard University spearheaded an effort to prove that Compton's interpretation of the Compton effect was wrong. Duane carried out a series of experimts to disprove Compton, but instead found evidce that Compton was correct. In 1924, Duane conceded that this was the case.
Compton investigated the effect of X-rays on the sodium and chlorine nuclei in salt. He used X-rays to investigate ferromagnetism, concluding that it was a result of the alignmt of electron spins.
In 1926, he became a consultant for the Lamp Departmt at Geral Electric. In 1934, he returned to gland as Eastman visiting professor at Oxford University. While there, Geral Electric asked him to report on activities at Geral Electric Company plc's research laboratory at Wembley. Compton was intrigued by the possibilities of the research there into fluoresct lamps. His report prompted a research program in America that developed it.
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Compton's first book, X-Rays and Electrons, was published in 1926. In it he showed how to calculate the dsities of diffracting materials from their X-ray diffraction patterns.
He revised his book with the help of Samuel K. Allison to produce X-Rays in Theory and Experimt (1935). This work remained a standard referce for the next three decades.
By the early 1930s, Compton had become interested in cosmic rays. At the time, their existce was known but their origin and nature remained speculative. Their presce could be detected using a spherical "bomb" containing compressed air or argon gas and measuring its electrical conductivity. Trips to Europe, India, Mexico, Peru and Australia gave Compton the opportunity to measure cosmic rays at differt altitudes and latitudes. Along with other groups who made observations around the globe, they found that cosmic rays were 15% more intse at the poles than at the equator. Compton attributed this to the effect of cosmic rays being made up principally of charged particles, rather than photons as Robert Millikan had suggested, with the latitude effect being due to Earth's magnetic field.
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In April 1941, Vannevar Bush, head of the wartime National Defse Research Committee (NDRC), created a special committee headed by Compton to report on the NDRC uranium program. Compton's
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