William Henry Bragg, 1862 - 1942
Circulated on winning Nobel Prize in Physics (1915)
Born: 2 July 1862, Wigton, Cumberland, England, UK
Died: 10 March 1942, London, England, UK
Biography from Wikipedia and Nobel Foundation
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William Henry Bragg quotes:
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- After a year's research, one realizes that it could have been done in a week. permalink
William Henry Bragg - But in its [the corpuscular theory of radiation] relation to the wave theory there is one extraordinary and, at present, insoluble problem. It is not known how the energy of the electron in the X-ray bulb is transferred by a wave motion to an electron in the photographic plate or in any other substance on which the X-rays fall. It is as if one dropped a plank into the sea from the height of 100 ft. and found that the spreading ripple was able, after travelling 1000 miles and becoming infinitesimal in comparison with its original amount, to act upon a wooden ship in such a way that a plank of that ship flew out of its place to a height of 100 ft. How does the energy get from one place to the other? permalink
William Henry Bragg - "Aether Waves and Electrons" summary of the Robert Boyle Lecture, Nature (1921) - God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. permalink
William Henry Bragg - Light brings us the news of the Universe. permalink
William Henry Bragg - The Universe of Light (1933) - No known theory can be distorted so as to provide even an approximate explanation [of wave-particle duality]. There must be some fact of which we are entirely ignorant and whose discovery may revolutionize our views of the relations between waves and ether and matter. For the present we have to work on both theories. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we use the wave theory; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays we think in streams of flying energy quanta or corpuscles. permalink
William Henry Bragg - "Electrons & Ether Waves" lecture (11 May 1921) - The dividing line between the wave or particle nature of matter and radiation is the moment 'Now'. As this moment steadily advances through time it coagulates a wavy future into a particle past. permalink
William Henry Bragg - The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. permalink
William Henry Bragg
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