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A century of matter waves

Nature Reviews Physics volume 5, pages 318–319 (2023)Cite this article

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One hundred years ago, Louis de Broglie posed a question: could matter particles behave like waves? This duality was already known for light; extending it to electrons and indeed all matter had huge implications, especially for the development of quantum mechanics.

In volume 177 of Comptes Rendus, the proceedings of France’s Academy of Sciences, there are three short contributions1,2,3 whose brevity belies their importance in the story of quantum physics. The year was 1923, and the author of these works was Prince Louis Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie.

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Fig. 1: Participants at the fifth Solvay Conference in Brussels, 1927.

References

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  1. Senior Editor for the Cross-Journal Editorial Team, Nature Portfolio https://www.nature.com/natrevphys/

    Alison Wright

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  1. Alison Wright
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Correspondence to Alison Wright.

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Wright, A. A century of matter waves. Nat Rev Phys 5, 318–319 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00592-1

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