After graduating, Davisson was appointed Assistant Professor of Physics at theCarnegie Institute of Technology. In 1917, he took a leave from the Carnegie Institute to do war-related research in the Engineering Department of theWestern Electric Company. The same year, he joined the Technical Staff ofBell Telephone Laboratories, where he remained until his retirement in 1946. From 1947 to 1949, he was a visiting professor at theUniversity of Virginia.[2]
Diffraction is a characteristic effect when a wave is incident upon an aperture or agrating, and is closely associated with the meaning of wave motion itself. In the 19th century, diffraction was well established for light and for ripples on the surfaces of fluids. In 1927, while working forBell Labs, Davisson andLester Germer performed an experiment showing that electrons werediffracted at the surface of a crystal of nickel. This celebratedDavisson–Germer experiment confirmed thede Broglie hypothesis that particles of matter have a wave-like nature, which is a central tenet ofquantum mechanics. In particular, their observation of diffraction allowed the first measurement of awavelength forelectrons. The measured wavelength agreed well with de Broglie's equation, where is thePlanck constant and is the electron'smomentum.[6]
While doing his graduate work at Princeton, Davisson met his future wife, Charlotte Sara Richardson, who was visiting her brother (and his doctoral advisor), ProfessorOwen Richardson.[7] Charlotte was the sister-in-law ofOswald Veblen, a prominent mathematician.[8] Clinton and Charlotte (d. 1984) married in 1911 and had four children:[9] Owen; James;Richard, who became a physicist; and Elizabeth.
"For his research that resulted in the discovery of the physical existence of electron waves through long-continued investigations on the reflection of electrons from the crystal planes of nickel and other metals"
^Kelly, Mervin J. (1962)."Davisson1881–1958"(PDF).Biographical Memoirs, Vol. XXXVI. US National Academy of Sciences. pp. 51–84.OCLC20727455. RetrievedDecember 14, 2012.
