Word: germer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...event that came to be called the "well-known accident," Clinton Davisson and his colleague Lester Germer in 1925 inadvertently stumbled on experimental proof of a crucial aspect of quantum theory. Davisson noticed that a stream of electrons beamed at a crystal of pure nickel was diffracted, a phenomenon that is characteristic of light waves. Electrons had been thought to exist only as sub-atomic particles until, just a few years before Davisson's observation, the newly developing quantum theory suggested that electrons could behave as both particles and waves. Here was proof, and it won Davisson a Nobel...