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Article Arthur Holly Compton: The Adventures of a Citizen Scientist John J. Compton John J. Compton

erhaps one never knows one’s parents, really hidden from me. Perhaps, out of self-preservation Pknows them. You never know their early lives or preoccupation, I did not look closely enough. and, as a kid, you are living inside your own In any case, I see now how little I ever really knew skin, not theirs. Growing up in Chicago, I never of what he achieved. What follows is something of knew my dad was famous. He was just a firm, affec- what I have come to know of my father’s remark- tionate, if too busy father figure, who loved music able career. I have called it “The Adventures of and the outdoors, played tennis better than I could, a Citizen Scientist,” because his life was truly one was awfully good with tools, and could explain sci- adventure after another, propelled by his love for entific ideas so well that I almost understood them. scientific discovery and his desire to be of service to I knew he was a and taught at the Univer- the nation and to humankind. sity of Chicago, and he and mother often took me on lecture or research trips, but I did not know what it I was all about. During the war, when he was one of The most powerful evidence of this, of course, came those in charge of the bomb project and we had during World War II. In August of 1939, shortly moved to Oak Ridge, he was just a hard-working after word reached this country about German work ordinary man doing a war job like everybody else. on fission, got Einstein to send August 6, 1945, brought a dramatically different his famous letter to President Roosevelt sounding perspective. My father was suddenly a national the alarm. It explained the military possibilities of and world figure. That fall, as I went off to college, fission and warned that the Germans were aware of I began to hear something of his achievements—not them too. However, responses to the letter by presi- only the bomb, but the studies and the dential advisors did little to advance the research , with all that they seemed to entail. needed to determine whether atomic was likely to be of any use to America in the coming war. That history has been an aura surrounding me Individual scientists were at work in their univer- ever since. Of course, this was, and is, a matter of sities, to be sure, many of them European emigres much pride; it was also a source of misgiving. My anxious about the Nazi threat. But there was no father preceded me everywhere—the unacknowl- high-level government office to coordinate scientific edged “elephant in the room” that opened doors research and development; there was no National and created expectations. I had to prove myself, Science Foundation, there were no national laborato- allbymyself,andImanagedtofindmyownpath. ries. Citizen scientists had to step up. And since its But, as I have thought back about it, I seem to have John J. Compton done so in two almost contradictory ways. It is was educated at the and evident to me now that I never did leave my father , with post-doctoral study at the Universities of Louvain and Paris. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather behind—the issues of his later life, as an interpreter and father, he has devoted himself to reflecting on the human of the philosophical import and social impact of meaning and the intellectual and moral impact of the sciences. the sciences, became my issues too, and we often He has been on the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at had vigorous discussions about them. In this way, Vanderbilt University for more than fifty years, teaching and he was surely the reason for my going into philoso- writing on aspects of ethics, metaphysics, the philosophy of phy. On the other hand, in spite of that inheritance, science, science and religion, and environmental philosophy. I have come to see how much of my father remained He is now Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus.

Volume 62, Number 1, March 2010 53 Article Arthur Holly Compton: The Adventures of a Citizen Scientist founding, the National Academy of Sciences was December 6, after consulting with his advisors, the the place to find them. president gave the go ahead. The next day, we were in the war. In June 1940, after the fall of France, at the urging of Arthur Holly Compton and his colleagues in The task of developing the option was the Academy, President Roosevelt created a new put into Compton’s hands. And in the fall of 1942, governmental entity, called the National Defense as the army was put in overall control, Compton Research Committee (NDRC), and named Vannevar sought out Robert Oppenheimer to manage the Bush,formerlyofMIT,asitschairman.Thenin actual bomb construction at Los Alamos, while he April of 1941, Bush asked Compton to chair a special gathered the remarkable group of scientists, engi- committee from the National Academy—of both neers, and cooperating industrial people, centered engineers and scientific people—to appraise the at Chicago, in what came to be called the “Metallur- possible military value of atomic energy. gical Laboratory”—later extended to Oak Ridge and Hanford, Washington—that was to explore the At the outset, there was universal agreement in fission science and invent the massive technology the group that uranium fission would eventually necessary to produce the plutonium raw material. prove to be an important source of energy to gener- The uranium option was to be pursued as well. ate electricity and possibly to power ships and sub- In his National Academy report, Compton had marines. But, given the scientific and technical made some estimates of how long it might take to uncertainties and the immense anticipated cost of actually come up with a working weapon—between separating the rare, fissionable U-235 from tons of three and five years, he said. The actual time from the common U-238, very few believed that it was December 6, 1941, to August 6, 1945, was three years likely to have any immediate use as a weapon of and eight months. war. It was , from the University of California, who changed the NDRC’s thinking. By now, the story is familiar; it has been told The new element plutonium (P-239) had recently by one author after another. The immense scientific, been discovered in his laboratory, produced from engineering, and industrial challenges were met the widely available U-238. Like U-235, it was and the bomb was created and used. In 1956, highly fissionable. By producing plutonium in a Compton wrote his own book about it—he called it large, controlled reaction uranium pile, one could Atomic Quest, and for him that was what it was. make enough—as little as 100 or so pounds would In a time of world war and national crisis, he was do—to make a powerful bomb. Lawrence met with proud to have been a part of the effort to secure James Conant and Compton in our house in atomic weapons and atomic energy for the United Chicago in September of 1941, and, with this new States. To him as a scientist, however, the most deci- possibility in mind, they determined to urge their sive moment, among many along the way, was the National Academy committee to move quickly. dramatic experiment that showed that a controlled, nuclear was indeed possible and, Compton consulted with at Colum- thus, that the effort to employ such a reaction to pro- bia and at Princeton—they were duce plutonium on a large scale could proceed. convinced that the chain-reacting pile would work, and Compton confirmed their calculations. Thanks The experiment was to take place in an aban- to ’s research, new possibilities for doned squash court under the west stands of Stagg large-scale separation of U-235 emerged as well. Field, the stadium (now torn Whether one used plutonium or uranium, the engi- down and replaced with a handsome library). There neering challenges were going to be daunting. But was a problem, though—for obvious security rea- by late November, the committee was unanimous. sons, Compton could not ask the president of the TheywerereadytorecommendtoVanBushandthe university, Robert Maynard Hutchins, for authori- NDRC that a full-scale effort be launched to make zationtoputthecriticalexperimentonthecampus. an atomic weapon. It might, they said, determine He had to make the decision himself. An attempt the outcome of the war. Compton delivered their was going to be made, for the first time in history, report on November 27, 1941. The NDRC approved to liberate energy from the atom in a controlled it, Bush took it to President Roosevelt, and on manner. It could quite possibly fail to work. Or

54 Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith John J. Compton

worse: if the reaction were to go out of control, precision, showing that as the critical condition it could result in a disastrous explosion—in the for the sustained chain reaction was being middle of the city of Chicago. approached no detectable new phenomenon was affecting the results … It was the middle It was a shocking plan, acceptable only from a of the afternoon before the preliminary tests sense of great urgency to get on with it. But “the were completed. Finally Fermi gave Weil the Italian navigator,” Enrico Fermi, the genius behind order to draw out the control rod another foot. it, had carefully calculated what would happen and This we knew meant that the chain reaction was confident that the danger was minimal. He and should develop on an expanding scale. his scientific crew had for weeks been building the reactor pile, brick by graphite brick, around the ura- The counters registering the rays from the nium core. Cadmium-coated control rods, inserted pile began to click faster and faster until the in the pile, prevented the reaction from taking off. sound became a rattle. I was watching both When they were withdrawn, the graphite should a recording meter and a galvanometer. I could capture just enough of the uranium’s escaping neu- see the from the galvanometer begin to trons to allow the process of fission to go on, but move across the scale. The line traced by the slowly. Compton checked the calculations himself. recording stylus was now curved upward. It was the morning of December 2, 1942. You need to Finally after many minutes the meters showed hear Compton’s own description of what happened a reading that meant the radiation reaching next: the balcony was beginning to be dangerous. “Throw in the safety rods,” came Fermi’s order. We entered onto a balcony at one end of the They went in with a clatter. The spot of light squash-court laboratory. At the opposite end from the galvanometer moved back to zero. of the room was the massive pile of graphite The rattle of the counters died down to an occa- blocks, within which the uranium was embed- sional click. I imagine that I can still hear the ded. On the balcony with us were twenty sigh of relief from the suicide squad. Eugene others, including Fermi. Most of these were Wigner produced a bottle of Italian wine and engaged in making various adjustments and gave it to Fermi. A little cheer went up. reading a variety of meters. On the floor below Atomic power! It had been produced, kept was , whose task was to handle under control, and stopped.1 the control rods. On a platform over a corner of the pile was a group of three men whom we I have heard that story many times. But what amazes jokingly called “the suicide squad.” It was their me still is not only the achievement of that first con- responsibility, in case the reaction could not trolled reaction, but the fact that Fermi predicted and otherwise be stopped, to throw buckets of cad- tracked it with such confidence, and that Compton mium solution over the pile. could, with similar confidence, have calculated that was ready with an axe to cut the rope holding the danger of its turning catastrophic was so slight a safety rod if the reaction should begin to grow that he could risk blowing up an entire city. with sudden violence. The door to the balcony There was another decisive moment, during one was through a concrete wall. A hundred feet of our rare family vacations in Michigan, when further back, behind a second concrete wall, Robert Oppenheimer came to see Compton with was another group of men, following the course the awful anxiety that an atomic explosion might of the experiments by remote control instru- actually fuse atoms of hydrogen in the water, or ments and an intercommunications system. It nitrogen in the air, and engulf the entire globe in was their task, if something should happen to a conflagration. He and his team (including Edward those of us in the laboratory beside the reactor, Teller) had discovered the principle of the fusion to throw in the “safety rods” by remote control. bomb. They almost stopped the entire project in its Fermi was conducting a systematic series of tracks, until further calculations showed that, under experiments, reading the meters as the final the conditions they envisioned, this horrific out- control rod was drawn out step by step. The come would be beyond any reasonable probability. results he plotted against his predictions. The But what an incredible decision to have to make! data fitted his calculated line with remarkable How could you trust such calculations? How could

Volume 62, Number 1, March 2010 55 Article Arthur Holly Compton: The Adventures of a Citizen Scientist you trust yourself? Only, I think, through a kind of ments in Mexico—their results showed that there faith embedded in science itself. Only if you were was a directional effect, more rays coming from the part of a long history of experimental work, only if West than the East, which is just what should hap- you were someone who had seen, again and again, pen if the rays were positively charged. In order that the physical world does follow precisely cal- to get a definitive answer to the problem, Compton culable, mathematical laws—and you had strong determined to launch a systematic, world-wide sur- evidence that you knew what those laws were— vey of cosmic ray intensities at differing latitudes, could you confidently risk these things. From the from Antarctica across the equator to the Arctic, time of Newton until the present space age, this is in every hemisphere, East and West, up the highest just what being a physicist has meant. mountains and down in the deepest mines. Sup- ported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, he II organized nine groups of researchers, some headed It is worth asking, though, what was it in his particu- byhisgraduatestudentsorcolleaguesatChicago, lar history that prepared Compton for this kind of others by colleagues in Mexico, Denmark, India, wartime leadership position? For an answer, one has and South Africa. They were determined, as he put to go back to the decade before the war—to a time it once, to “decode the mystery of cosmic rays.” when the largest laboratory for studying elementary It was the scientific adventure of the age—and physical forces and particles was not in some uni- the largest group of scientific researchers that had versity building, but in the air around us, where ever been assembled on a common project. Why strange, high-energy radiation was coming into the did Compton have the experience to imagine the earth’s surface from outer space. In 1912 in Austria, much larger “atomic quest” later on? Because he Victor Hess was the first to identify this radiation had managed this one, what Time magazine later when he found his electroscope discharging more called his “cosmic quest.” Over a period of two rapidly as he ascended in a balloon. No one knew years, the teams covered the globe, packing their what it could be, and it soon became a focus of ionization chambers and electrometers with them. international study. It was in the name of science, to be sure, but it was Robert Millikan—then probably America’s most equally Indiana Jones—with all its risks. Although eminent physicist—framed the first theory of the they secured the best high-altitude measurements origin of this new radiation, which he dubbed of any, two members of one team lost their lives “cosmic rays.” He called them “the birth cries of while climbing on Mt. McKinley in Alaska. the stars,” and proposed that they were high-energy Compton himself climbed Colorado’s Mt. Evans, light , emitted in interstellar space when flew in a plane inside the Arctic Circle, and led simple atoms, like hydrogen, fused together to a group, on pack horse, into the high Andes of fashion the heavier ones which would, eventually, Peru and the Himalayas in India. My mother and coalesce into the large celestial objects we see. But elder brother went with him on many of these trips, there was some counter-evidence to this. A Dutch- sharing the duties of instrument reading—although man, Jacob Clay, found different intensities of cos- I, at the tender age of 4, was left behind. In the mic rays at different latitudes, with decreasing course of all his travels, Compton crossed the equa- intensity near the equator, suggesting that the rays, tor five times. He sent a ship around Cape Horn unlike photons, had electrical charge and were be- and put Admiral Byrd in charge of measurements ing affected by the earth’s magnetic field. As the in Little America, and he commissioned a deck thirties began, however, Millikan’s view prevailed officer on a ship of the Canadian-Australasian Line, and, according to his own measurements, it seemed the HMS Aorangi, to carry his instruments from to be confirmed. the Northern Pacific, past Hawaii, all the way to EnterArthurCompton,anotherstudentofradia- Australia and New Zealand. tion. The enormous penetrating power of some of these incoming rays—with far in excess of There was another, lesser but no less fascinating, those normally associated with photons—seemed adventure lodged within this one. In 1932–1933, to him to argue for the charged particle hypothesis. as the world survey results began to come in, So did Luis Alvarez and Tom Johnson’s measure- Compton’s position appeared to be supported more

56 Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith John J. Compton

and more strongly. There was nearly a 20% varia- After a long night of waiting for last-minute adjust- tion in cosmic ray intensity from the equator to the ments, in the early morning of August 5, 1933, poles. Nonetheless, Millikan thought these numbers a huge crowd watched as the flight took off from were inconclusive. His view was that there might the middle of the Fair, in Soldier Field. Because of well be charged particles near the surface of the a contract dispute with Fair officials, the Piccards earth, but that they were only “secondary radia- had bailed out, and it was Air Force Major Thomas tion,” the product of his photons’ impact on par- Settle at the controls. Then, to everyone’s dismay, ticles in the atmosphere. If only one could get well only twenty minutes after take off, the balloon came above the atmosphere, one could tell! Millikan down in the nearby Burlington rail yards. Settle had had been sending his own equipment up in air- had to abort because of a failure of a valve in the planes to see whether this secondary radiation fell balloon vent control system. My mother always con- off with altitude, albeit with only modest success. tended that, in the hasty descent, one of her precious The debate between the two scientists was played down comforters, used for insulation, had some- out in several tense scientific meetings and in the how been thrown overboard, but the news accounts press. Cosmic rays had popular appeal. never confirmed her complaint! Another attempt, this one successful, was made in late November, Just at this point, the officials planning for the but from Akron, Ohio, for by that time the Fair upcoming Chicago World’s Fair had an inspiration. had closed. This second flight did in fact set a new They had already contracted with August and altitude record—61,237 feet. Fair promoters touted Jean Piccard, the Swiss brothers who had pioneered the success and the aeronauts were paraded through stratospheric balloon flight in Europe, to attempt main streets throughout the mid-West. But the an ascent during the World’s Fair, highlighting pilots had not attended carefully enough to the the Fair’s grand theme, “A Century of Progress.” scientific instruments, so the scientific rewards were What better strategy than to invite Compton and of negligible value. The Compton-Millikan debate Millikan to put their competing electroscopes in was not settled. a new gondola and balloon, this time made in America, and send it up, hoping for a new high Over the next two years, however, as evidence altitude record and for cosmic ray measurements from the world survey piled up, and as other inves- that would resolve the famous debate? This would tigators sent up smaller, unmanned balloons, show- show the world how far American science and tech- ing that the latitude effect, far from decreasing in nology had come!2 the upper atmosphere, actually increased by more than 90%, the scientific community moved decisively Dow Chemical Company was enthusiastic about to the Compton side. Finally, on January 1, 1936, showing off its new lightweight magnesium alloy, in a meeting of the Section of the American “Dowmetal,” for the gondola, and Goodyear- Association for the Advancement of Science held in Zeppelin wanted to showcase its new rubberized St. Louis, Compton wrote the concluding chapter cotton fabric for the balloon. Army and Navy avia- to the drama.4 tors, who had been striving for altitude records themselves, were happy to cooperate as needed. To a packed house, including newsmen, Compton There was even a rivalry with the Soviet Union— recounted the long history of the investigation of their balloonists were about to fly into the strato- cosmic rays and presented the overwhelming sphere too. Compton was delighted with the flight evidence that the primary rays were electrically prospect and, although Millikan balked at first, charged corpuscles—predominantly protons and al- he decided to go along. The press had a field day. pha particles, together with some positive and nega- The Chicago Daily News proclaimed, “The Piccard tive . Directional measurements showed, Flight May End Compton-Millikan Debate on Cos- he noted, a greater intensity of the radiation coming mic Ray Properties,” and added that the celebrated from the direction in which our Milky Way is mov- debate “may be settled once and for all this summer, ing relative to the stars, suggesting that Millikan the cosmic ray itself acting as referee.”3 was right that they come from the depths of space, but he rebutted the hypothesis point by When inflated, the Century of Progress balloon point. Millikan attended the session, but made no was taller than King Kong—more than 150 feet high. comment. The January 13 issue of Time magazine

Volume 62, Number 1, March 2010 57 Article Arthur Holly Compton: The Adventures of a Citizen Scientist put Compton on the cover and commented that Works for Westinghouse Electric, where he “[Although] his was but one of a thousand dis- invents sodium vapor lamp now used on high- courses made last week, … for most of the audience ways everywhere. During WWI, works for air it marked the end of the ‘mystery’ of cosmic rays, force, invents first turn and bank indicator. wrote finis to one of the most reverberating scien- Yearns to get back to pure research on own tific controversies of the century.”5 Cosmic rays are projects. Following post-doctoral year at re- still avidly studied today, chiefly to explore their nowned , becomes chair detailed composition and their astro-physical ori- of little-known midwestern university physics gins—now thought to be within exploding super- department at age twenty-eight. Ends up mak- novae—and to follow their trajectories through the ing world-shaking discoveries about x-rays. galaxy. The Compton team’s conclusions have held Awarded Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927 at up well. thirty-five.

Then, in the late thirties, Compton organized The story seems incredible, yet it all happened. a number of conferences on cosmic rays, the last of I almost hate to elaborate on it for fear of diminishing which was held in Chicago during the summer of its genuine drama, but I have to dwell a bit on the 1939. Many European scientists were in attendance, discovery for which Compton is chiefly known and among them , the brilliant dis- for which he won the Nobel Prize, the so-called 7 coverer of the “.” But war “Compton Effect.” clouds were on the horizon, and within two years, As one reads the history of science, things often Compton and he were on opposite sides of the race look easy—one result after another, leading up to to build an atomic weapon. Cosmic rays had proved where we are today. What an illusion! In physics, to be Compton’s entry into . during the early part of the twentieth century, the reality was a boiling ferment of discovery and III extended controversy. And the young Compton But how did Compton come into physics in the was working in the middle of it. What his Compton first place? The story is out of a Tom Swift or Hardy Effect experiments demonstrated—precisely and for Boys novel.6 One could imagine a sketch of the plot the first time—was Einstein’s conjecture that light on the back dust jacket that would read something is not just a wave, it also comes in “quanta”-like like this: particles. His work provoked a crisis in physics— Growing up in a small Ohio town at the turn of how, after all, could anything really be both a wave the 20th century, a boy becomes fascinated by and a particle? Soon the other side of the coin would astronomy and airplanes. Using savings from be turned up as well: seemingly material particles, household chores, he buys a telescope from like electrons, are not just particles, they are waves the Sears-Roebuck catalogue for $3.95. Builds too! And within a few years, Heisenberg and his own camera and mounts it on nearby col- Schrödinger outlined the synthesis we now call lege telescope to photograph Halley’s Comet. “ ,” the most comprehensive, Makes and flies more than a thousand model highly confirmed theory of matter and light we airplanes, researching the properties of airfoils. have today. No wonder Compton’s work seemed At age 16, using hand tools, constructs and like Nobel material. flies in his own 27-ft wingspan, wood and mus- To understand what was going on, we have to lin glider with specially designed balancing recall some history. had come up with system. Publishes first article in Fly magazine. the quantum idea back in 1900. He was studying Aided by older brother, begins experimental the radiation emitted by hot, incandescent sub- physics work on the recently discovered x-radi- stances. He saw that the frequencies of such radia- ation while in college. Parents encourage ser- tion do not range continuously over the spectrum, vice as missionary. But with their blessing, sees but are discrete and particular to each substance. calling in life to serve others through scientific The only way to make sense of this, he figured, discovery, and follows brother to famous east- was to imagine that the excited atoms which pro- ern graduate school where he continues x-ray duce the radiation must somehow be restricted to studies. Teaches at a university. Tries industry. certain specific energy states—as he put it, they

58 Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith John J. Compton

must be “quantized.” As a result, he argued, the their specific properties? All through the early atoms could only emit or absorb energy in integral 1900s, experimenters played with them, reflecting, multiples of these same unit amounts. He called diffracting, and polarizing them, filtering them, these bits of energy, “quanta.” This seemed to be and sending them through and bouncing them off what the observations about radiation required. varioussubstancestoseewhateffectstherewere. In graduate school and, later, at the Cavendish, So began the strange story of the quantum. Compton was studying these effects. X-rays went The idea worked mathematically, but no one, right through human bodies, but when they hit not even Planck himself, believed it was more than metals or crystals, they were found to “scatter” in a mathematical device, arranged to fit the data. all directions, much as ocean waves send up spray Radiation was a wave phenomenon, and waves when they hit a rocky shore. Some observers had and discontinuous bits just do not go together. found that this scattered or “secondary” radiation Somewhat later, however, in 1905, in one of the did strange things—it seemed to have a direction- papers of that “miracle year” of his, Einstein ality to it and, most extraordinarily, to have a differ- showed that if you really go with Planck’s idea, ent, longer than the primary rays. you can use it to explain a remarkable phenomenon What could be going on? about light, the “photo-electric effect.” You can explain why light waves striking one side of a thin IV sheet of metal shoot off, not other waves, but elec- When he arrived at Washington University in the trons, discrete individual particles, from the other fall of 1920, Compton immediately began a close side. And shoot them off with an energy precisely examination of the question. He relished being on correlated with the light frequency you use—just his own. He had gone there, he said, and not to as Planck’s hypothesis suggests might be the case. a larger, more eminent institution, precisely so that Maybe light waves could behave like little particles, he could think his own thoughts and pursue his own knocking other particles around! Einstein had for- line of experiments without being unduly influenced mulated a “quantum theory of light.” by others. He designed his own equipment and But no one believed in Einstein’s light quanta— blew his own glass for his x-ray tubes. He worked or “photons,” as they came to be called—any more nights, in the basement of the science building, than they had believed in Planck’s. So the years so that the vibrations from student and faculty feet went by. By the early twenties, had would not disturb his measurements, and my accepted Einstein’s astonishing theory of relativity mother often brought him meals. Over two years, and even the amazing 1915 theory of gravity, but in experiment after experiment, he accumulated the no one accepted his quantum theory of light! Even evidence he needed: yes, that odd x-ray behavior did those, like , who used Planck’s original take place; the direction of the secondary, scattered quantum idea in creating his own beautiful theory rays depended on the angle at which the incident of the planetary atom, did not give any credence to rays impacted a surface; and their did Einstein’s application of it to light. Everyone knew increase. He measured these effects precisely. The that light really was a wave. Light could be dif- problem was that nothing in standard electro-mag- fracted and polarized and, when two light beams netic theory “allowed” this to happen. Respectable hit each other, they interfered with each other, just waves can bounce around, penetrate things, be dif- like water waves do. Maybe light frequencies just fracted, and all the rest, but what makes them what came in “bunches” that were somehow like jolts they are, is their wavelength. That does not change. or pulses, but never particles. As one historian put it, it is as if you held up In the meantime, the close study of x-rays was a red rose to a mirror and its reflection turned advancing apace. No one was completely sure what violet.8 This does not happen with visible light— x-rays were, but they clearly seemed to be waves— when you look in the mirror you see a red rose. high frequency electromagnetic waves, produced The wavelengths seem to stay the same. But with in an x-ray tube by a stream of electrons striking x-rays, with high frequency light in other words, a metal plate. Essentially, they were light at fre- it was happening. Compton tried for months to quencies above the visual range. But what were explain this in terms of wave theory, but finally

Volume 62, Number 1, March 2010 59 Article Arthur Holly Compton: The Adventures of a Citizen Scientist gave up and turned to Einstein’s idea of light quanta ended up close friends. This is not always the way instead. Everything fell into place. You could treat science works, but the way it is supposed to. the light quanta just as if they were like little billiard balls, and they could be envisioned colliding with Arthur Holly Compton did not aim to remake billiard-ball-like electrons on the surface of the tar- . He was a smart, ingenious, dirt- get. Just as with the balls on the pool table, what under-the-nails experimentalist who never let up. should happen does happen—the collision sends He was too modest when he once wrote to his father the quantum and the in precisely predict- that he was just someone who was good at hand- able directions, at precisely predictable angles with work and “a plain, everyday hard plugger.” But respect to one another, and with precisely predict- he was close. Compton was the polar opposite of able momenta and energies. In the process, you can an Einstein or a Bohr—he let the experiments guide predict that the light must give up some energy, and his thought, not the other way around. And those should relax somewhat as it bounces off. It should experiments helped to bring down classical physics then have a precisely calculable, longer wave- and usher in a new era. His later adventures with length—just as his observations showed that it did. cosmic rays and plutonium were more public; this Theory and experiment were in perfect agreement.9 adventure was a solitary one.

In December of 1922, Compton reported his dis- In later life, he went on to other things—to help covery to the American Physical Society’s annual his little-known midwestern university begin its meeting. It so happened that a German physicist, journey to national leadership, and to write and Arnold Sommerfeld, was visiting in the United States lecture on education, religion, and public policy. and heard the lecture. He wrote in great excitement He was indeed a citizen scientist. He helped win to Niels Bohr, “The most interesting thing that a war and, after it was over, he worked for world I have experienced in America … is a work of peace. NASA named one of its space telescopes the Arthur Compton in St. Louis. After it, the wave “Compton Observatory.” And there theory of Roentgen-Rays will become invalid …”10 isnowaComptoncrateronthemoon.Muchof He was right. The word spread through Europe. this will fade from memory. But the “Compton Sommerfeld named it the “Compton Effect” and put Effect” is destined to live on beyond him—as long it in his 1923 textbook on quantum theory. It took as science is done, his “effect” will be there. € a few years more, but the proposition that light is Not bad for a small-town Ohio boy. both wave and particle was here to stay. Notes However, during the interval, there was disagree- 1Arthur H. Compton, Atomic Quest (New York: Oxford ment back in America. Classical electro-magnetism University Press, 1956), 141–3. 2David H. Devorkian, Race to the Stratosphere: Manned was not going down without a fight. In a lovely con- Scientific Ballooning in America (New York and Berlin: frontation, the work by the little-known young man Springer Verlag, 1989). from the small midwestern university was strongly 3Dempster MacMurphy, “Piccard Flight May End disputed by the well-known elder statesman from Compton-Millikan Debate on Cosmic Ray Properties,” the elite university in the East. Harvard professor Chicago Daily News, May 27, 1933. 4Arthur H. Compton, “Cosmic Rays as Electrical Particles,” William Duane asserted that his measurements 50 (December 15, 1936). failed to accord with those of young Compton. They 5“Cosmic Clearance,” Time: The Weekly Newsmagazine 27 debated at the next meeting of the Physical Society (January 16, 1936): 28–32. and exchanged visits to each other’s laboratories, but 6James R. Blackwood, The House on College Avenue: The Comp- to no avail. At the summer 1924 meeting of the Brit- tons at Wooster, 1891–1913 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968). 7Arthur H. Compton, “X-rays as a branch of optics” (Nobel ish Association for the Advancement of Science in lecture, December 12, 1927). Toronto, another debate was staged. Afterwards, 8Edmund Blair Bolles, Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius a friend of Compton’s, a distinguished Indian physi- in the Quantum Revolution (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry cistnamedC.V.Raman,saidtohim,“Compton, Press, 2004), 106. 9Roger Stuewer, The Compton Effect: Turning Point in Physics you are a very good debater, but the truth isn’t in (New York: Science History Publications, 1975). 11 you!” In the end, though, it was in him: Duane him- 10Bolles, Einstein Defiant, 102. self found defects in his own experiments and went 11Arthur H. Compton, The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton on to confirm and refine Compton’s results. The two (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), 37.

60 Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith