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American physicist Arthur Holly Compton won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927. Compton confirmed that radiation has both particle and wave characteristics
Arthur Compton (1892-1962), American physicist and Nobel laureate whose studies of X rays led to his discovery in 1922 of the so-called Compton effect. The Compton effect is the change in wavelength of high energy electromagnetic radiation when it scatters off electrons. The discovery of the Compton effect confirmed that electromagnetic radiation has both wave and particle properties, a central principle of quantum theory.
Arthur Holly Compton was born in Wooster, Ohio, and educated at Wooster College and Princeton University. In 1923 he became professor of physics at the University of Chicago. While at the University of Chicago, Compton directed the laboratory where the first sustainable nuclear chain-reaction was performed. (see Nuclear Energy). Compton also played a role in the development of the atomic bomb (see Nuclear Weapons). From 1945 to 1953 Compton was chancellor of Washington University, and after 1954 he was professor of natural philosophy there. For his discovery of the Compton effect and for his investigation of cosmic rays and of the reflection, polarization, and spectra of X rays, he shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics with the British physicist Charles Wilson.