Background
He was born on August 15, 1892, to a noble family in Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, younger son of Victor, 5th duc de Broglie.
educator physicist scientist writer
He was born on August 15, 1892, to a noble family in Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, younger son of Victor, 5th duc de Broglie.
The youngest of five children, de Broglie inherited a familial distinction for the formidable scholarship. His early education was obtained at home, as befitted a great French family of the time. After the death of his father when de Broglie was fourteen, his eldest brother Maurice arranged for him to obtain his secondary education at the Lycee Janson de Sailly in Paris.
After graduating from the Sorbonne in 1909 with baccalaureates in philosophy and mathematics, de Broglie entered the University of Paris. He studied ancient history, paleography, and law before finding his niche in science, influenced by the writings of French theoretical physicist Jules Henri Poincare. The work of his brother Maurice, who was then engaged in important, independent experimental research in X rays and radioactivity, also helped to spark de Broglie’s interest in theoretical physics, particularly in basic atomic theory. In 1913, he obtained his Licencie es Sciences from the University of Paris’s Faculte des Sciences.
De Broglie’s interest in what he called the “mysteries” of atomic physics namely, unsolved conceptual problems of the science was aroused when he learned from his brother about the work of the German physicists Max Planck and Albert Einstein, but the decision to take up the profession of physicist was long in coming. He began at 18 to study theoretical physics at the Sorbonne, but he was also earning his degree in history (1909), thus moving along the family path toward a career in the diplomatic service. After a period of severe conflict, he declined the research project in French history that he had been assigned and chose for his doctoral thesis a subject in physics.
In this thesis (1924) de Broglie developed his revolutionary theory of electron waves, which he had published earlier in scientific journals. The notion that matter on the atomic scale might have the properties of a wave was rooted in a proposal Einstein had made 20 years before. Einstein had suggested that light of short wavelengths might under some conditions be observed to behave as if it were composed of particles, an idea that was confirmed in 1923. The dual nature of light, however, was just beginning to gain scientific acceptance when de Broglie extended the idea of such a duality to matter.
De Broglie’s proposal answered a question that had been raised by calculations of the motion of electrons within the atom. Experiments had indicated that the electron must move around a nucleus and that, for reasons then obscure, there are restrictions on its motion. De Broglie’s idea of an electron with the properties of a wave offered an explanation of the restricted motion. A wave confined within boundaries imposed by the nuclear charge would be restricted in shape and, thus, in motion, because any wave shape that did not fit within the atomic boundaries would interfere with itself and be canceled out. In 1923, when de Broglie put forward this idea, there was no experimental evidence whatsoever that the electron, the corpuscular properties of which were well established by experiment, might under some conditions behave as if it were radiant energy. De Broglie’s suggestion, his one major contribution to physics, thus constituted a triumph of intuition.
The first publications of de Broglie’s idea of “matter waves” had drawn little attention from other physicists, but a copy of his doctoral thesis was sent to Einstein, whose response was enthusiastic. Einstein stressed the importance of de Broglie’s work both explicitly and by building further on it. In this way the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger learned of the hypothetical waves, and on the basis of the idea, he constructed a mathematical system, wave mechanics, that has become an essential tool of physics. Not until 1927, however, did Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer in the United States and George Thomson in Scotland find the first experimental evidence of the electron’s wave nature.
After receiving his doctorate, de Broglie remained at the Sorbonne, becoming in 1928 professor of theoretical physics at the newly founded Henri Poincaré Institute, where he taught until his retirement in 1962. He also acted, after 1945, as an adviser to the French Atomic Energy Commissariat.
De Broglie’s keen interest in the philosophical implications of modern physics found expression in addresses, articles, and books. The central question for him was whether the statistical considerations that are fundamental to atomic physics reflect an ignorance of underlying causes or whether they express all that there is to be known; the latter would be the case if, as some believe, the act of measuring affects, and is inseparable from, what is measured. For about three decades after his work of 1923, de Broglie held the view that underlying causes could not be delineated in a final sense, but, with the passing of time, he returned to his earlier belief that the statistical theories hide “a completely determined and ascertainable reality behind variables which elude our experimental techniques.”
He was asked to join Le Conseil de l'Union Catholique des Scientifiques Francais, but declined because he was non-religious and an atheist.
De Broglie became a member of the Académie des sciences in 1933, and was the academy's perpetual secretary from 1942.
On 12 October 1944, he was elected to the Académie française, replacing mathematician Émile Picard. Because of the deaths and imprisonments of Académie members during the occupation and other effects of the war, the Académie was unable to meet the quorum of twenty members for his election; due to the exceptional circumstances, however, his unanimous election by the seventeen members present was accepted.
In an event unique in the history of the Académie, he was received as a member by his own brother Maurice, who had been elected in 1934.
UNESCO awarded him the first Kalinga Prize in 1952 for his work in popularizing scientific knowledge, and he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on 23 April 1953.
He inspired the formation of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and was an early member.
He was also a foreign member of the British Royal Society, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and, like several of his forebears, a member of the Académie Française.
He never married.