Wave-Particle Duality and its Origins

This reconstruction shows how theories develop and the intricate relationship between physical reality and experimental determination. Martin Perl, Nobel Laureate in physics has been working for the last several years on the isolation of quarks and has formulated a philosophy of speculative experiments for experimental confirmation (Perl and Lee 1997 Niaz 2009, Chap. 13). From C. Maugin s behef of physical reality to M. Perl s philosophy of speculative experiments, we can understand how scientific research methodology has evolved over the last seven decades (Rodriguez and Niaz 2004b). 

Now after my presentation, a French physicist approached me and told me that already before 1927 French physicists had a photographical picture of a diffraction of electrons in the drawer, but they were not able to interpret it Only after the publications of Davisson and Germer, they came back to it and realized that they had missed the opportunity to become laureated (Kubli 2011). 

This reminds us of Einstein s advice to Heisenberg in 1926 Only the theory decides what one can observe (Reproduced in Holton 2000). 

Davisson continued with his experiments and an accident in his laboratory provided an unexpected lead to the understanding of de Broglie s theory. In their seminal article, Davisson and Germer (1927a) start by recounting the accident  

George P. Thomson (son of J. J. Thomson), while at the University of Aberdeen read de Broglie (1924) and like Davisson also attended the scientific meeting at Oxford in 1926. In contrast, Thomson worked with electron diffraction of solids (celluloid, gold, aluminium, platinum), which permitted him to use electrons of considerably higher energies, and observed dififaction rings. A preliminary announcement of his results was made in Nature in June 1927 

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