Arthur Compton

Arthur Holly Compton was born September 10, 1892, and by 1919 had won a National Research Council Fellowship to study gamma rays at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. That work led to the discovery of the Compton effect, demonstrating the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation at a moment when the physics community resisted the idea. He went on to use X-rays to explain ferromagnetism as electron spin alignment and studied cosmic rays, finding them primarily positively charged. During World War II, Compton became a central architect of the Manhattan Project: his reports helped launch it, a…