Nov 4, 2026 · 30 min · 10 segments
In 1913, Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed that electrons orbit atoms in fixed energy levels, where any jump between levels emits or absorbs a photon of light with an energy exactly equal to…
Louis Victor de Broglie was born in 1892 in Dieppe, the younger son of the 5th Duke de Broglie, in one of the oldest noble families in France.
Letters written by his elder sister described him as a lively, charming, and precocious child with a pronounced flair for the dramatic.
His sister imagined a bright future for him as a statesman, since as a child he loved history and politics.
In 1906, when Louis was a teenager, his father died.
His older brother Maurice, who was 16 years older than him, became the 6th duke that year, succeeding his father, and sent him to the Lycée Janssen de Sailly in Paris.
At school, Louis did well in French, history, physics, and philosophy.
He showed little enthusiasm for mathematics, though, and also struggled with drawing in foreign languages.
At this point in his life, no single subject was favored by Louis over the others.
Around 1909, he began studying at the Sorbonne, where he took on history and law and expected to join the civil service.
Maurice, however, was a physicist.
He had his own laboratory at the family residence in Paris, and he investigated X-rays and the ways they diffract.
Louis took an interest in this work, and his brother's influence played a part in Louis' transition away from history.
Then, by chance, he read the report for the first Solvay Conference, a meeting devoted entirely to the problems of the budding field of quantum physics.
The report ignited his imagination, and he ultimately decided to make theoretical physics his career.
Before he could get deep into the field, though, he had to complete his mandatory military service, and the First World War broke out as he was doing that.
Thanks to Maurice's influence, though, Louis spent much of the war at the radio telegraphy station at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, maintaining the equipment that sent wireless transmissions.
When the war ended, he joined Maurice's experiments on X-rays and the photoelectric effect, the phenomenon Einstein explained in 1905, and won his Nobel Prize for explaining.
He finally resumed his studies of theoretical physics in 1920.
Louis later explained that the mystery surrounding the structure of matter and radiation drew him back to the field, a mystery that was deepening as quantum physics began to increase its influence on it.
He had come back just as that mystery was facing a massive roadblock.
Louis Victor de Broglie was born in 1892 in Dieppe, the younger son of the 5th Duke de Broglie, in one of the oldest noble families in France.
Letters written by his elder sister described him as a lively, charming, and precocious child with a pronounced flair for the dramatic.
His sister imagined a bright future for him as a statesman, since as a child he loved history and politics.
In 1906, when Louis was a teenager, his father died.
His older brother Maurice, who was 16 years older than him, became the 6th duke that year, succeeding his father, and sent him to the Lycée Janssen de Sailly in Paris.
At school, Louis did well in French, history, physics, and philosophy.
He showed little enthusiasm for mathematics, though, and also struggled with drawing in foreign languages.
At this point in his life, no single subject was favored by Louis over the others.
Around 1909, he began studying at the Sorbonne, where he took on history and law and expected to join the civil service.
Maurice, however, was a physicist.
He had his own laboratory at the family residence in Paris, and he investigated X-rays and the ways they diffract.
Louis took an interest in this work, and his brother's influence played a part in Louis' transition away from history.
Then, by chance, he read the report for the first Solvay Conference, a meeting devoted entirely to the problems of the budding field of quantum physics.
The report ignited his imagination, and he ultimately decided to make theoretical physics his career.
Before he could get deep into the field, though, he had to complete his mandatory military service, and the First World War broke out as he was doing that.
Thanks to Maurice's influence, though, Louis spent much of the war at the radio telegraphy station at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, maintaining the equipment that sent wireless transmissions.
When the war ended, he joined Maurice's experiments on X-rays and the photoelectric effect, the phenomenon Einstein explained in 1905, and won his Nobel Prize for explaining.
He finally resumed his studies of theoretical physics in 1920.
Louis later explained that the mystery surrounding the structure of matter and radiation drew him back to the field, a mystery that was deepening as quantum physics began to increase its influence on it.
He had come back just as that mystery was facing a massive roadblock.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.