BROGLIE, LOUIS (VICTOR PI- ERRE RAYMOND) DE (B. Dieppe, France
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ndsbv1_B 9/25/07 4:31 PM Page 409 Brodmann Broglie served as an assistant physician, then later chief physician, BROGLIE, LOUIS (VICTOR PI- of the anatomical laboratory of the psychiatric clinic. This ERRE RAYMOND) DE (b. Dieppe, France, clinical work drew his attention to various cognitive 15 August 1892; d. Louveciennes, France, 19 March deficits, including aphasia, agnosia, and apraxia. The out- 1987), physics, quantum theory, wave mechanics. break of the First World War placed additional demands Louis de Broglie achieved a worldwide reputation for on Brodmann’s time, which included his volunteering for his discovery of the wave theory of matter, for which he work in a military hospital. In May of 1916, he assumed received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1929. His work an appointment as the prosector at the Nietleben Mental was extended into a full-fledged wave mechanics by Erwin Asylum in Halle an der Saale. Here he met the much Schrödinger and thus contributed to the creation of quan- younger Margarete Franeke, an assistant at the asylum, tum mechanics. After an early attempt to propose a deter- whom he married on 3 April 1917. Although Brodmann’s ministic interpretation of his theory, de Broglie joined the personal life was much enriched, Germany’s growing mil- Copenhagen school’s mainstream noncausal interpreta- itary losses in the war brought Brodmann’s scientific work tion of the quantum theory. Stimulated by David Bohm’s to a halt. revival of his views in 1952, however, de Broglie returned In 1917, Emil Kraepelin, one of the early leaders in to his early interpretation. Throughout his career, de German psychiatry, opened the German Research Center Broglie wrote an impressive number of specialized books, for Psychiatry in Munich. Kraepelin was interested in together with more general accounts aimed at populariz- determining how anatomy could aid our understanding of ing modern twentieth-century physics and discussing its neuropathology. To this end, Kraepelin recruited Franz philosophical issues. Nissl and Walther Spielmeyer, both with an extensive research background in neuropathology. Kraepelin had Early Life. Louis-Victor de Broglie was the son of Victor, also known Brodmann during Brodmann’s years in Berlin duc de Broglie, and Pauline d’Armaillé; he was the and convinced him to move to the center to work with younger of two brothers in a family of five children. His Nissl. For Brodmann, the prospects looked bright. He family, from a noble Italian (Piedmont) lineage, the anticipated a happy family life, economic security, and a Broglia, settled in France when Francesco Maria Broglia prestigious academic position. The Brodmanns’ first child followed Cardinal Jules Mazarin in the seventeenth cen- had been born in early 1918. He would also be able to tury. After that time, the family served the French kings focus on scientific research with Nissl, whose work he and then the French state in military and diplomatic greatly respected. Yet Brodmann did not live to enjoy the affairs. With the brothers Maurice and especially Louis, it fruits of his labors. In an era lacking in antibiotics, Brod- added to its famous representatives (among them three mann succumbed to a massive infection on 22 August 1918. state marshals) two world-rank physicists of the twentieth century. In 1901, Louis’s family moved to Paris where he stud- BIBLIOGRAPHY ied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly. He entered the university WORKS BY BRODMANN La Sorbonne in 1909 and first studied history, obtaining “Beiträge zur histologischen Lokalisation der Grosshirnrinde. VI. his licence ès lettres in 1910 before briefly switching, appar- Mitteilung: Die Cortexgliederung des Menschen.” Journal ently without much conviction, to law. Soon, however, für Psychologie und Neurologie 10 (1908): 231–246. deeply impressed by Henri Poincaré’s writings, he Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Grosshirnrinde in ihren changed his mind and enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences, Principien, dargestellt auf grund des Zellenbaues. Leipzig: studying physics and mathematics in the years Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, 1909. (2nd ed., 1925.) English translation, with biographical introduction and 1911–1913. Louis did not have to try hard to convince editorial notes, by Laurence J. Garey: Brodmann’s his family of his choice: His elder brother, Maurice, him- “Localisation in the Cerebral Cortex.” Smith-Gordon, 1994; self a physicist, who had been in charge of supervising Imperial College Press, 1999; 3rd ed. Springer Verlag, 2006. Louis’s education since the death of their father in 1906, encouraged this decision. To supplement the somewhat OTHER SOURCES conservative education dispensed at the Sorbonne, Louis Danek, A., and J. Rettig. “Korbinian Brodmann (1868–1918).” caught up with the most recent theoretical research, inde- Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie 140 (1989): pendently reading the works of the leading theorists of his 555–566. time, Paul Drude, Paul Langevin, Hendrik Lorentz, Max Vogt, Oskar. “Korbinian Brodmann.” Journal für Psychologie und Planck, and Poincaré. He obtained his Licence ès sciences in Neurologie 24 (1919): 1–10. 1913. This same year, he joined the army to complete his military service. Maurice, who served for a long time in Ken Aizawa the navy’s wireless communications, arranged for him to NEW DICTIONARY OF SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY 409 ndsbv1_B 9/25/07 4:31 PM Page 410 Broglie Broglie fulfill his duties with the team at the Eiffel Tower’s ical theories at the Paris Faculty of Sciences in 1933 and radiotelegraphy station. taught there until his retirement in 1962. De Broglie led The outbreak of World War I marked a pause in a rather withdrawn life and never married. Louis’s pursuit of strictly theoretical speculations. Instead De Broglie was elected a member of the Academy of of being released after the regular three years of service, he Sciences in 1933 (section des sciences mécaniques), and was stayed in the army until 1919. Throughout the whole elected its permanent secretary in 1942 (division des sci- duration of the conflict, he remained on the team at the ences mathématiques; he resigned this charge in 1975). In Eiffel Tower station. Though he was involved in rather 1929 he was the first recipient of the Henri Poincaré Prize innovative applied research (for instance, in collaboration of the Académie des Sciences and in 1932, he was granted with Leon Brillouin and his brother Maurice, he con- the Albert I of Monaco Prize. In 1952 he received the first tributed to the development of wireless communication Kalinga Prize of UNESCO for his efforts to explain for allied submarines), he longed for more theoretical and aspects of modern physics to the layman. He was elected fundamental work. When the war ended, Louis de Broglie a member of the Académie Française in 1944, (one of the resumed his studies and research work in physics. While fellow academicians to greet his election was his brother attending the lectures of Langevin at the College de Maurice, himself elected in 1934). In 1945 he became an France, he also began to assist his brother with experimen- advisor to the French Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique tal investigations. At the time, Maurice was already an (CEA). In 1956 he received the gold medal of the Centre experimentalist with an international reputation. His pri- National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and in vate laboratory was renowned for pioneering research on 1961 he was decorated with the Grand Cross of the x-ray spectra, and the young Louis there became familiar Légion d’Honneur (1961). with the most advanced techniques of the field. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1953 and was an Officer of the Order of Leopold of Belgium. Scientific Career. During this time, de Broglie was already He was an honorary doctor of the universities of Warsaw, forming ideas which would eventually lead to his discov- Bucharest, Athens, Lausanne, Quebec, and Brussels, and a ery of the wave nature of matter. In contrast to his more member of eighteen foreign academies in Europe, India, experimental research, on which he collaborated with and the United States. other members of Maurice’s laboratory, the theoretical ideas that would secure Louis’s fame were developed in Development of de Broglie’s Theory. Louis’s acquain- almost total isolation. After a series of three groundbreak- tance with quanta went back at least to his reading of his ing communications to the Paris Academy in 1923, where brother’s reports and notes from the first Solvay meeting he outlined the basics of a wave theory of matter, he in 1911, where Maurice served as scientific secretary. exposed his ideas in his PhD thesis Recherches sur la théorie According to Louis’s recollections, he was immediately des quanta (Researches on the quantum theory), which he caught by the puzzle of the quanta and promised himself defended in 1924. These works suggested that the idea of that he would devote all of his energy to understanding it. the dual nature of light (as both a localized particle and a His work in his brother’s laboratory was instrumental in wave extended in space) put forth by Albert Einstein in providing him with firsthand knowledge of some aspects 1905 should be applied to matter as well. With the suc- of the new phenomenology, essentially those related to the cessful extension of de Broglie’s results by Schrödinger, study of x-ray absorption and of the x-ray-induced photo- and then especially with the discovery of electron diffrac- electric effect. The context of this research was the further tion in crystals by Clinton Joseph Davisson and Lester study of the atomic structure, where investigation of the Halbert Germer at Bell Labs in the United States in 1927, inner energy levels was made possible using x-rays instead and by George Paget Thomson at the University of of visible light.