Physicist Arthur Holly Compton, Ph.D., the University’s first faculty member to receive a Nobel Prize (1927), is still getting recognition for his groundbreaking research more than 40 years after his death.
The latest acknowledgment comes from the American Physical Society (APS), which has designated Washington University — where Compton did his Nobel Prize-winning research on X-rays — as a site of historical significance to physics.
The APS Historic Sites Committee selected Washington University along with four other U.S. sites to be the first listed on the APS Register of Historic Sites.
John L. Hopfield, Ph.D., president-elect of the APS and the Howard A. Prior Professor in the Life Sciences at Princeton University, will present a commemorative plaque to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton during an 11 a.m. ceremony Dec. 12 in the Women’s Building Lounge.
The APS plaque will hang alongside a University plaque just inside the Eads Hall main entrance that marks the building in which Compton discovered the X-ray scattering effect.
Three talks about Compton, including a keynote address by Neal F. Lane, Ph.D., former director of the National Science Foundation and chief science adviser to President Bill Clinton, will begin at 2 p.m. Dec. 12 in Crow Hall, Room 201.
Lane, the Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly University Professor at Rice University, will discuss “Compton and Science Policy.” Lane also holds appointments as a senior fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, where he is engaged in matters of science and technology policy, and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice.
Michael W. Friedlander, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, will address “Compton as Chancellor.” And John S. Rigden, Ph.D., adjunct professor of physics, will discuss the scientific and historical significance of Compton’s experiment.
Compton’s association with the University began when he was appointed the Wayman Crow Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences and chair of the physics department in 1920 — when he was just 28 years old. During his three years as a faculty member, Compton did the experimental work that resulted in the Nobel Prize in physics.
In 1923, he left the University for the University of Chicago, where he made important contributions to cosmic rays physics and later played a major role in World War II’s atomic bomb project as director of the Metallurgical Laboratory.
He returned to Washington University in 1945 to become its ninth chancellor and served for eight years. Compton brought many outstanding faculty to the University, particularly in the sciences, and in so doing began the University’s rise to international stature.
During his original tenure at WUSTL, in his laboratory in the basement of Eads Hall, Compton investigated the dual nature of X-rays.
He found that when an X-ray scatters off an electron, the X-ray loses energy in the same way that a billiard ball does when it bounces off another ball. This became known as the “Compton effect” and showed that radiation also behaved like a particle. His work served as a stimulus a few years later for the theory of quantum mechanics.
“In three early years at Washington University and one bold, masterful stroke of experimental physics, Compton not only put Washington University on the world map of quantum physics, but also America itself, for the first time and for all time,” said John W. Clark, Ph.D., the Wayman Crow Professor and chair of the Department of Physics.
“The Compton X-ray scattering experiment was a ‘smoking gun’ in the history of science, establishing that the theoretical photon of Einstein’s photoelectric effect that won him the Nobel Prize was real, and that light has an alter ego as a particle,” Clark added.
“It is fitting in the World Year of Physics celebrating Einstein’s wonder year of 1905, that Washington University, through Arthur Compton’s greatness, has a permanent link with one of the scientific revolutions stimulated by Einstein.”
The APS launched its historic sites register this year to coincide with the World Year of Physics, in which events are being held worldwide to raise public awareness of physics.
The four other places on the inaugural APS Register of Historic Sites are Case Western Reserve University, site of the Michelson-Morley experiment; the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, in recognition of Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering work in electricity; Johns Hopkins University, where Henry Rowland revolutionized spectroscopy with his ruled gratings; and Yale University, where J. Willard Gibbs made fundamental contributions to thermodynamics.
The Dec. 12 ceremony and talks are open to the public, but seating is limited. For more information, call 935-6276.