Clinton Davisson

While working at the University of Princeton, Clinton Davisson met Professor O.W. Richardson’s sister Charlotte. They got married on August 4, 1911, just before he joined Carnegie Institute of Technology as Assistant Professor

The couple had four children; three sons named Clinton Owen, James Willans and Richard Joseph and a daughter named Elizabeth Mary. James and Richard later followed their father’s footsteps and became research physicists.

In 1954, Davisson retired from University of Virginia. He was now seventy-four and physically very weak. However, his mind was equally alert and his interest in scientific matters was high as before. Even at this stage, one could see him sitting for hours, trying to solve different scientific problems.

Clinton Joseph Davisson was born on 22 October 1881, in Bloomington, Illinois. His father, Joseph Davisson, was a soldier in the Union Army. In 1865, he settled in Bloomington and began working as a contract painter. His mother, Mary Calvert Davisson, was a teacher. He had one sister, Carrie.

Clinton Davisson had his early education at Bloomington High School. He graduated from there in 1902 and entered University of Chicago on scholarship; but because of financial reason, had to leave after around four quarters.

Sometime in 1903, he found employment with a telephone company in Bloomington. Fortunately, Professor Robert A. Millikan, who had spotted his talent, came to his aid at this juncture.

On his recommendation, Davisson joined the Purdue University in January 1904 as an assistant in the physics department. Subsequently, in the fall of the same year, he went back to Chicago.

He remained in residence at the University of Chicago for around a year. Then in the fall of 1905, again on the recommendation of Professor R. A. Millikan, Davisson joined Princeton University as a part time Instructor in Physics, a post he occupied until 1910.

Davisson began his career in September 1911 as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Institute of Technology, a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working there until 1917. Meanwhile, he made a trip to England to work with Professor J.J. Thompson at the Cavendish Laboratory for the summer of 1913.

In 1917, he was refused enlistment by the United States Army. Therefore, he did the next best thing, accepting war-time employment in the Engineering Department of the Western Electric Company, New York City.

His initial intention was to utilize the summer holidays by working there. Later, he took leave of absence from Carnegie Institute of Technology for the duration of the World War I and continued his research work.

As the war ended in 1918, he resigned from his post at Carnegie because the job involved heavy teaching assignments, which left little scope for basic research. In the six years that he spent there, he was able to undertake only one research work.

Contrarily, Western Electric Company offered him freedom to undertake full time basic research. Therefore, he took up permanent position there, becoming a Member of the Technical Staff at its Telephone Laboratory. Later in 1925, it was renamed as Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Davisson’s experiment on electron diffraction was his most important work. In 1927, working with Germer, he discovered that when a beam of electrons is reflected from a metallic crystal it shows diffraction patterns similar to those of electromagnetic waves like X-rays.

Known as Davisson–Germer experiment, it played an important role in demonstrating the wave–particle duality of electrons, as established by de Broglie hypothesis. Later, it also helped to establish quantum mechanics and the Schrödinger equation.