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Atomic Waves in Private Practice

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Quantum Mechanics at the Crossroads

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References

  1. Louis Leprince-Ringuet, “Louis, Maurice et le laboratoire,” La vie des sciences 9, 325–329 (1992) on p 327; Jean de Pange, Journal, 3 vols. (Grasset, Paris 1964–79), vol 2

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  2. Bruce R. Wheaton, The tiger and the shark: Empirical roots of wave particle dualism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1983), pp 305–306

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  3. Albert Einstein, “Über einen Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden hueristischen Gezichtspunkt,” Annalen der Physik 17 (1905), 132–148

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  4. A general overview is in Wheaton, Tiger (Ref 2).

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  5. Olivier Darrigol, “Strangeness and soundness in Louis de Broglie’s early works,” Physis 30 (1993), 303–372, on p 355; Wheaton, “The laboratory of Maurice de Broglie and the empirical foundations of matter waves,” in Paul Germain, ed, La découverte des ondes de matière (Tech & Doc, Paris 1994), pp 25–40, on p 33; Mary Jo Nye, “Aristocratic culture and the pursuit of science: The de Broglies in modern France,” Isis 88 (1997), 397–421, on p 413. I am indebted to Geoffrey Wheaton for images 3.1 and 3.9 and much else.

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  6. An influential German generation from Schelling through Wien, as an outgrowth of Naturphilosophie and Kantian epistemological pedagogy in Germany, rejected material atoms in favor of an “electromagnetic worldview,” constituted of only aether. In this context it was an aberration, certainly worthy of study, but not significantly diverting the monumental course of the atomic river.

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  7. Celebrating Louis’s centennial, Georges Lochak contributed his very useful book, Louis de Broglie: Un prince de la science (Flammarion, Paris 1992.) As director of the Louis de Broglie Foundation, M. Lochak rightly wishes to advertise the immense contribution that Louis made to physics. While very valuable, this book contains many undocumented quotations ascribed to Louis and takes little note of prior careful historical literature on the subject. I suggest its use cum grano salis. In answer to his complaint on p. 76, I cite Wheaton, “Le Duc dans la méchanique ondulatoire,” in S. Deligeorges, ed, Le monde quantique (Paris 1985), pp 81–92 and Sciences & avenir, numéro special hors serie 46 (Avril, 1984), 42–47; Olivier Darrigol, “The origin of quantized matter waves,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 16, 197–253 (1986). On “Whig history,” see Wheaton, “The last word on science,” History of Geophysics 3, 31–3 (1987).

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  8. Student and colleague Jean Guitton describes Louis as imbued with pudeur, modesty almost to a fault: Jean Guitton, “Le duc Louis de Broglie: Témoignage sur l’homme que j’ai connu,” La vie des sciences 9, 331–4 (1992).

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  10. Some of this material appeared in a preliminary discussion before the Académie des Sciences in Paris on the centennial of Louis’s birth in 1992. I was honored to be invited. See Wheaton, Wheaton, “Laboratory” (Ref 5).

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  11. The most authoritative family information, assembled by the archivists at the Academy, is in Anatole Abragam, “Louis Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, 1892–1997” Royal Society of London: Biographical memoires of fellows 34, 22–41 (1988). Hélie Louis Charles de Bourdeille, Généalogie de la branche française de la Maison de Broglie, 1610–1885 (Imp. apprentis orphelins, Paris 1885). Dominique de Broglie, Les Broglie: leur histoire (Ed. Palais Royal, Paris 1972). Nye, “Aristocratic” (Ref 5). Alfred Ruault, Notice historique sur Broglie (Dactylograph, Paris 1937). Jean de la Varende, Les Broglie (Fasquelle, Paris 1950)

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  12. Invited by the Pange family to peruse their family archives in Strasbourg, 1979, I was taken aback to have in my unsupervised hands holograph letters from Napoleon Bonaparte to Madam de Staël.

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  13. Jesus Ynfante, Un crime sous Giscard: l’affaire de Broglie, lópus Dei, Matesa (Maspero, Paris 1981). Anon., “Assassinat de l’Abbé de Broglie,” Le petit journal 236 (Paris: 26 mai, 1895)

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  14. Albert, duc de Broglie, Mémoires du duc de Broglie, 2 vols. (Calmann Levy, Paris 1938)

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  15. Gordon Wright, France in modern times: 1760 to the present (Rand Mc-Nally, Chicago 1960), p 284. The Paris Academiciens say it was Charles Victor.

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  16. Joris Karl Huysmans, A rebours (Charpentier, Paris 1884), chapter 12.

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  17. Charles Dickens, Dombey and son (London: 1867); here a French money lender.

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  18. Unfortunately, since its master, as minister for Algerian affairs, was shot to death in the streets of Paris in 1976, the library is no longer available to outsiders.

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  19. See Wheaton, “Enlightenment,” The Physics Teacher (in press). Jacques married Augustine, god-daughter of the Duc and daughter of Francois Mérimée, caretaker of the estate. Maurice placed a bronze relief memorial to Fresnel by David d’Angers on the small chapel in Broglie, just off the main square. For Louis’s view see his “La physique moderne et lóeuvre de Fresnel,” Révue de métaphysique et morale 34, 421–40 (1927); “Lóeuvre de Fresnel et l’évolution actuelle de la physique,” Révue dóptique théorique et instrumentale 6, 552–569 (1927).

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  20. You can visit this-it is now public parkland.

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  21. We owe Mary Jo Nye (“Aristocratic culture,” Ref 5) for her exploration of the intertwining family and financial connections surrounding our story.

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  22. [Pauline de Broglie], Comtesse de Pange, Comment j’ai vue 1900, 4 vols. (Grasset, Paris 1960–73), vol 1 (1960)

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  23. Louis recalled these dinners with horror. “Every night,” he told Lochak, Louis de Broglie (Ref 7), p 32.

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  24. Pauline de Broglie, Comtesse de Pange, Comment j’ai vue 1900, 4 vols. (Grasset, Paris 1960–73), vol 1 1900 (Ref 22). Many of the Paris servants came too, even bringing some of the furniture.

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  25. Comtesse Célestine d’ Armaillé, Quand on savait vivre heureux (Plon, Paris 1934)

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  28. After initial designs by Daimler, the automobile developed most sustainably with Lavassor and Peugeot; the first influential race, with a prize of 5000 old francs from Paris to Rouen, was advertised in Le Petite journal (1894) just as Maurice began his naval career. Peter Roberts, Collectors’ history of the automobile (Bonanza, New York 1978); Jean Louis Loubet, Citroen, Pugeot, Renault et les autres (Le Monde, Paris 1995)

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  29. Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man out of time (Dell, New York 1981)

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  30. The subtitle of Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The railway journey: The industrialization of space and time in the 19th century (University of California Press, Berkeley 1986)

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  32. Grandmother Armaillé’s property, across from the Salle Gaveau, is a veritable castle over 6 stories high and extends north fully to the rue de La Baume. It had a permanent servant complement of over 15. When the Broglies sold it after 1901 it became, and still is, an office building, headquarters today of one of France’s largest banks. The photo in Nye (Ref 5 is only of the porte cochère and hardly indicates its grandeur.

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  33. P. de Pange, 1900 (Ref 22), vol 1, pp 173–177

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  34. There is some uncertainty about this. Maurice and Pauline refer consistently to 27 on the western corner, Louis (as recalled by Lochak) to 29 on the east. 27 was torn down in the 1970s. 29, shown here, was torn down in 1992, Louis’s centenary.

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  35. Quoted by Lochak, Louis de Broglie (Ref 7), p 29

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  36. Louis jeune was elegant and handsome. His sister recalled how, on the trip to Stockholm in 1929, he was the attention of many women including Princess Ingrid, later Queen of Denmark.

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  37. 93, rue Perronet, subsequently, but no longer, the site of the Centre Fondation Louis de Broglie.

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  38. And blacked out the final line on p 236. In these passages, de Broglie mentioned his abandonment in 1928 of his theory of the double soultion, his conversion to the indeterminist thesis of Bohr and Heisenberg, and his taking up again of his old ideas along with Bohm and Vigier.

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  39. Anatole Abragam, “Louis de Broglie: La grandeur et la solitude,” Recherche 23, 918–23 (1992)

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  40. M. de Broglie, Les premiers congrès de physique Solvay et lórientation de la physique depuis 1911 (Michel, Paris 1951)

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  42. L. de Broglie, “Mon itinéraire scientifique,” Un itinéraire scientifique (La découverte, Paris 1987), pp 33–8. Anon., “La mort du physicien Louis de Broglie: Un penseur de la matière,” Le Monde, 13107 (20 mars, 1987), 1, 15

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  43. This was unusual. For the usual, see Alphonse Berget, “La sciences,” L’Avenir de la France (Alcan, Paris 1918), 490–508. Terry Shinn, “The French science faculty system, 1808–1914: Institutional change and research potential in mathematics and physical science,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 10, 271–332 (1979). Craig Zwerling, “The emergence of the Ecole Normale Supérieur as a centre of scientific education in the 19th century,” in Robert Fox and George Weisz, The organization of science and technology in France, 1808–1914 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980), 31–60

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  44. One of the Poulsen magnets from I. T. & T. later became part of Lawrence’s 27-inch cyclotron. See J. Heilbron, R. Seidel, and B. Wheaton, Lawrence and his laboratory (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, 1981), pp 12–14.

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  45. Providing the most dramatic photographic evidence of the armistice ever, since the signals were recorded photographically and ceased abruptly according to the time marker at 11 am on 11 November 1918. With thanks to Roy MacCleod.

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  46. Details in correspondence with F. A. Lindemann (later Viscount Cherwell) at Nuffield College, Oxford. For specifics, see Nye, “Aristocratic culture” (Ref 5) and Wheaton, Tiger (Ref 2).

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  47. Picture on p 236 of Louis de Broglie que nous avons connu (Fondation L. de Broglie, Paris 1988)

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  49. Since torn down to build the headquarters of, appropriately, Electricité de France.

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  50. P. de Pange, 1900 (Ref 22), vol 1

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  51. His student André Georges, quoted by Louis’s successor as secrétaire perpetuelle at the Académie, Paul Germain, “Louis de Broglie ou la passion de la ‘vraie’ physique,” in Louis de Broglie que nous avons connu, (Ref 47), iii–xviii, on p xi

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  53. Trillat, “Réminescences sur l’âge héroque de la diffraction électronique,” Louis de Broglie que nous avons connu (Ref 47), pp 231–6, on p 232. Every wednesday at Byron the group discussed current literature and their own researches. He refers always to “les fréres de Broglie.”

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  54. I am much indebted to Louis Leprince-Ringuet for granting me a most useful interview in 1983. I learned much also from Louis Michel (1983–1992) and from Abner Shimony (2000).

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  55. For as complete a list as I could find in 1992 see Wheaton, “Laboratory” (Ref 5), note 24, to which I add now Blas Cabrera, Maurice dócagne, and possibly Paul Janet, Joseph Béthenod, Gabriel Hanotaux, Paul Hazard, Jules Haag. I encourage research on all of these names, particularly in French industrial archives.

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  56. “the affliction of a father seeing one of his children, for whose education he has made the greatest sacrifices, voluntarily ruining the magnificent situation that he has made for him and dishonoring a respected name by escapades that the principles or the prejudices of the family cannot admit.” The convoluted prose is intentional by Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe. À la recherche du temps perdu, vol 5 (Ed. nouvelle rev., Paris 1922), pp 70–1.

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  57. Hardly in France: Pierre Duhem, “Usines et laboratoires,” Revue philomatique de Bordeaux et du sud ouest 9 (1899)

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  58. Why this is so important in France is clear from D. Pestre, “La physique en France, 1900–1930, un panorama,” in Germain, La découverte des ondes de matière (Ref 5), pp 1–10, in particular his section 3.

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  61. I would very much like to arrange with national historians comparative studies of electronic laboratory genesis in Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union to mirror those we have now for Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. This is, for me, the signal scientific advance of that century.

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  82. Recall Guitton’s emphasis on Louis’s pudeur. Some of this Maurice attributed to Louis’s failure in 1912 to pass a university exam in general physics (including wave motion!): “Le prince Louis de Broglie enfant” Grandes souvenirs, belles actualités: Le recueil du jeunes 2 (Julliet, 1948), 4–6. “La jeunesse et les orientations intellectuelles de Louis de Broglie,” Louis de Broglie: Physicien et penseur (Michel, Paris 1953), 423–9

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  84. Darrigol, “Strangeness” (Ref. 5) provides the most detailed analysis of how misapprehensions, misinterpretations, and outright but canceling errors encouraged the de Broglies’ inspiration, harking back at least to 1911. For even more, plow through Darrigol, From c numbers to q numbers: The classical analogy in the history of quantum theory (University of California Press, Berkeley 1992)

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  90. Maurice de Broglie, Les rayons x (Presses U, 1922), pp 17, 156–159. The idea was so revolutionary that a subsequent presentation to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on “X-rays and beta-rays” was listed in Maurice’s official vita as “X-rays and gamma-rays,” and is still frequently so mis-cited. See M. de Broglie, “X rays and beta rays,” British Association for the Advancement of Science: Report (Murray, London 1922), pp 352–353.

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  96. L. de Broglie, “Deux conceptions adverses sur la nature de la lumière et leur synthése possible,” Scientia 42, 128–34 (1927). L. and M. de Broglie, “Quelque considérations sur les notions d’onde et de corpuscle,” Scientia 55, 177–85 (1934)

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  97. For a different view, see Fritz Kubli, “Louis de Broglie und die Entdeckung der Materiewellen,” Archive for history of exact sciences 7, 26–68 (1970).

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  98. L. de Broglie, Recherches sur la théorie des quanta (Masson, Paris 1924). A facsimile reproduction has been published under the same title with useful supplementary material (Fondation Louis de Broglie, Paris 1992).

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  99. To understand how, see Wheaton, Tiger (Ref 2), pp 286–92; the condition requires that the velocity of the “fictive” phase wave exceed c by the same factor by which c exceeds the electron velocity. In anachronistic modern terms the product of wave and group velocity = c 2.

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  101. These meager but influential precedents in early retarded potential considerations by Vito Volterra and Léon Brillouin were then termed “hereditary fields.” See Wheaton, Tiger (Ref 2), pp 287–8; Darrigol, “Strangeness” (Ref 5).

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  103. Darrigol, “Strangeness” (Ref 5), p 349

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  104. L. de Broglie, Recherches (Ref 98), pp 127–128 (conclusion)

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  105. O. Darrigol, “Les premiers travaux de Louis de Broglie,” in Germain, La découverte des ondes de matière (Ref 5), 41–51, p 48. Recall that “at age 20” was when Louis failed his general physics exams, and turned réservé.

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  106. This success was really the crux of the matter for physicists. Compare Langevin’s draft critique of de Broglie’s thesis, in Wheaton, Tiger (Ref 2), pp 295–7, with the final version presented to the Sorbonne by Perrin, in facsimile in Louis de Broglie que nous avons connu (Ref 47), un-numbered pages following Lochak, “Une certaine idée de la science,” xix–xxxii.

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  109. The only true source is Einstein’s holograph letter to Langevin of 16 December 1924. I read it as “Er hat einen Zipfel des grossen Schleiers gehäftet,” most others have seen “gelüftet.” A facsimile reproduction is found in L. de Broglie, Recherches (1992, Ref 98), p 136. Look for yourself.

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Wheaton, B.R. (2007). Atomic Waves in Private Practice. In: Quantum Mechanics at the Crossroads. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg . https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32665-6_3

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