Louis de Broglie (1892–1987)

Prince Louis-Victor de Broglie, known simply as Louis de Broglie, was a French physicist famed for his research on quantum theory and for his discovery of the wave nature of electron particles, for which he received the 1929 Nobel Prize. He was the younger son of Victor, 5th duc de Broglie and Pauline d’Armaille. The de Broglie family was one of the most illustrious noble families of France. Louis was educated at home by private tutors and after his father died in 1906, his older brother Maurice de Broglie, the 6th duc, took charge of his upbringing. After a few years at a lycee, Louis attended the Sorbonne University and graduated with an arts degree. He decided to study theoretical physics, following the lead of Maurice, who had also become a physicist. As his service in the French army during World War I, Louis worked as a telegraph operator at a station in the Eiffel Tower. After the war, he resumed his studies of physics at the Sorbonne, receiving his doctoral degree in 1924 and and publishing his doctoral thesis, "Research on Quantum Theory." His ideas were taken seriously by many scientists, including Albert Einstein. Louis de Broglie was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Henri Poincare Institute in Paris, which had just been built and in 1932, he was named to the chair of theoretical physics at the Faculty of Sciences of the Sorbonne, where he taught for 30 years. In 1933, de Broglie was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. The Academy awarded him its Henri Poincare Medal in 1929 and the Albert I of Monaco Prize in 1932. He was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. In 1960, upon the death of Maurice, Louis de Broglie became the 7th duc de Broglie. He published more than 25 books on various subjects of physics.