Davisson, Clinton Joseph (1881-1958)

US physicist who in 1927 made the first experimental observation of the wave nature of electrons. George Thomson carried through the same research independently, and in 1937 they shared the Nobel Prize for Physics. Davisson was born in Bloomington, Illinois, and studied at the University of Chicago. He worked for the Western Electric Company (later Bell Telephone) in New York 1917-46. With Lester Germer (1896-1971), Davisson discovered that electrons can undergo diffraction, so proving French physicist Louis de Broglie's theory that electrons, and therefore all matter, can show wavelike structure.