Jean perrin experiment year
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Jean Baptiste Perrin
French physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin (1870-1942) helped to prove that atoms and molecules exist, an achievement that earned him the 1926 Nobel Prize in physics.
Jean Baptiste Perrin was born in Lille, France, on September 30, 1870, and raised, along with two sisters, by his widowed mother. His father, an army officer, died of wounds he received during the Franco-Prussian War. The young Perrin attended local schools and graduated from the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris. After serving a year of compulsory military service, he entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1891, where his interest in physics flowered and he made his first major discovery.
Between 1894 and 1897 Perrin was an assistant in physics at the Ecole Normale, during which time he studied cathode rays and X rays, the basis of his doctoral dissertation. At this time, scientists disagreed over the nature of cathode rays emitted by the negative electrode (cathode) in a vacuum tube during an electric discharge. Physicists disagreed among themselves over whether cathode rays were particles—a
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Jean Baptiste Perrin
(1870–1942) French physicist
Perrin was born in Lille, France, the son of an army officer. He was educated at the Ecole Normale, where he received his doctorate in 1897. He was appointed to the Sorbonne where he was made professor of physical chemistry in 1910. He remained there until 1941, when he went to America to escape the Nazis.
Perrin's early work was in the developing field of cathode rays and x-rays. In 1895 he established the important result that cathode rays are deflected by a magnetic field and thus carry a negative charge. He began to calculate the ratio of charge to mass for these particles but was anticipated by J. J. Thomson. In 1901 he produced a work on physical chemistry, Les Principes (Principles).
His most important work however was on Brownian motion and the molecular hypothesis. In 1828 Robert Brown had reported that pollen granules immersed in water moved continuously and erratically. However, it was left to Albert Einstein to provide some quantitative explanations for the motion in 1905. Assuming that the pollen was being moved by
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Jean Baptiste Perrin
French physicist (1870–1942)
For the tutor and educational author, see Jean Baptiste Perrin (fl. 1786). For the Swiss composer, see Jean Perrin (composer). For the IT entrepreneur, see Jean Georges Perrin.
Jean Baptiste PerrinForMemRS[1] (30 September 1870 – 17 April 1942) was a French physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids (sedimentation equilibrium), verified Albert Einstein's explanation of this phenomenon and thereby confirmed the atomic nature of matter. For this achievement he was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926.[2]
Biography
Early years
Born in Lille, France, Perrin attended the École Normale Supérieure, the elite grande école in Paris. He became an assistant at the school during the period of 1894–97 when he began the study of cathode rays and X-rays. He was awarded the degree of docteur ès sciences (beyond PhD) in 1897. In the same year he was appointed as a lecturer in physical chemistry at the Sorbonne, Paris. He became a professor
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