Discovery
The Auger emission process was discovered in 1922 by Lise Meitner, an Austrian-Swedish physicist, as a side effect in her competitive search for the nuclear beta electrons with the British physicist Charles Drummond Ellis. The French physicist Pierre Victor Auger also discovered it in 1923 upon analysis of a Wilson cloud chamber experiment and it became the central part of his PhD work. High-energy X-rays were applied to ionize gas particles and observe photoelectric electrons. Observation of electron tracks independent of the frequency of the incident photon suggested a mechanism for electron ionization that was caused from an internal conversion of energy from a radiationless transition. Further investigation and theoretical work showed that the effect was a radiationless effect more than an internal conversion effect by use of elementary quantum mechanics and transition rate and transition probability calculations.
Read more about this topic: Auger Effect
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son’s future are counting on me.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)