Louis de Broglie

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), French physicist and Nobel laureate, who made major contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics with his studies of electromagnetic radiation. Louis Victor, Prince de Broglie, was born in Dieppe and educated at the University of Paris. He tried to rationalize the dual nature of matter and energy, both of which he found to be composed of corpuscles and moving in waves. For his 1923 theory describing the wave nature of electrons, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in physics. He was elected to the Academy of Sciences (1933) and to the French Academy (1943). He was named professor of theoretical physics at the University of Paris (1928), permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences (1942), and adviser to the French Atomic Energy Commission (1945). Several of his books have been translated into English, including Matter and Light (1939), Revolution in Physics (1953), Current Interpretation of Wave Mechanics (1964), and Quantum, Space, and Time (1984).