Clinton Joseph Davisson (22.10.1881—1.02.1958) was an American physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was born in Bloomington. He graduated from the University of Chicago (1908) and from Princeton University (1911). In 1911 — 17 he worked at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in 1917—46 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and in 1946 —54 he was visiting professor at the University of Virginia.
His research was in the field of thermionic and thermal-ion emission, electron microscopy, thermal radiation, the physics of crystals and quantum theory. Together with his colleague L. Germer he discovered in 1927 the phenomenon of the diffraction of electrons by a nickel crystal (independently of G. P. Thomson), which was the experimental confirmation of de Broglie's theory of the wave properties of matter (Nobel Prize, 1937). He developed the method of electron focusing.
The D. Hughes (1935) and E. Cresson (1931) Medals, and others.