1892-1962
Particle Physicist

Nobel Prize Winner.

Arthur Holly Compton shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the Compton effect, which lent strong support to Albert Einstein's important law of the photoelectric effect (1905).

Background.

Born in Wooster, Ohio, Compton received a B.S. from the College of Wooster (1913) and an M.A. (1914) and a Ph.D. (1916) from Princeton University. After teaching at the University of Minnesota (1916-1917) and working on airplane instrument design with the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, Compton spent a year at Cambridge University, where he did research with Ernest Rutherford, the discoverer of the nucleus of the atom. He then accepted a post at Washington University in Saint Louis, where he taught physics from 1920 to 1923. He was at the University of Chicago from 1923 to 1945, after which he returned to Washington University, where he was chancellor...