Germer, Lester

Davisson, Clinton Davis and Germer, Lester Halbert were working at Bell Labs at the time of their discovery of electron diffraction. Davisson died in 1958 at age 76 (born 1881) and Germer died in 1971 at age 75 (born 1896). 

The wavelike character of electrons was confirmed by showing that they could be diffracted. The experiment was first performed in 1925 by two American scientists, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer, who directed a beam of fast electrons at a single crystal of nickel. The regular array of atoms in the crystal, with centers separated by 250 pm, acts as a grid that diffracts waves and a diffraction pattern was observed (Lig. 1.21). Since then, some molecules have been shown to undergo... 

Years later, physicists proved that electrons do have wave characteristics by producing the interference pattern predicted by de Broglie. Clinton Davisson, working in the United States with his junior partner Lester Germer, and George Thomson in Great Britain made the discovery. For their work, Davisson and Thomson... 

Lester Halbert Germer (1896-1972). American physicist. Discoverer (with Davisson) of the wave properties of electrons. 

To find out if electrons present a diffraction pattern as light waves do, physicists Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer at the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in 1927 were able to "shoot" electrons through a nickel crystal, whose structure is arranged by nature to have atomic planes just the right distance apart. They heated a metal filament to eject electrons that then traveled through the crystal to land in an electron detector. 

Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer demonstrate electron diffraction at the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. 

Diffraction is a characteristic wave property. It is useful to recall that the mass of the electron was determined accurately by Millikan in 1909. A precise mass is very much a particle-type property. Geiger counters monitor P-particles (electrons) one by one ( click-click-click ) another particle property. The de Broglie equation suggests that wavelengths (X) are associated with electrons and that these should be on the order of 10"" m. In principle, electrons should be diffracted by crystals, a prediction confirmed in 1927 by Clinton Joseph Davisson (1881-1958) and Lester Halbert Germer (1896-1971), at Bell Telephone Laboratories. De Broglie was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in physics and Davisson won a share of the 1937 Nobel Prize in physics. 

Clinton Davisson, Lester H. Germer, George Thomson ... 

Two physicists, Chnton Davisson and Lester Germer, successfully carried out just such an experiment in 1927, thus giving experimental support to De Broghe s proposal. With this discovery, theorists such as Schrodinger received the impetus to further pursue the mathematical analogies between classical waves and electron waves. Whereas Heisenberg s approach was mathematically abstract, that of... 

Surface science is a relatively new area of science. The first X-ray photoelectron spectrum was collected in 1907 by P. D. Innes, and the first vacuum photoelectron spectrum was taken in 1930. American physicists Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer... 

Low energy electron diffraction (LEED) is the extension of Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer s 1927 experiment at Bell Labs into a practical tool for characterizing the surfaces of clean solids. The experiments agreed so convincingly with de Broglie s predictions of a few years earlier that particles and waves could never again be completely separated in the minds of physicists. 

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