Chapter 10
THE SOUL OF THE OLD SYSTEM
I
n November 1924, the science faculty of the University of Paris gathered to hear a doctoral thesis defense. The candidate, Louis de Broglie, was thirty-two years old, having been delayed in his scientific career first by family tradition and then by the war. The de Broglies, over the generations, had provided France with a succession of statesmen, politicians, and military officers. Louis’s father was a member of parliament, and Louis had studied history at the Sorbonne with a view to becoming a diplomat. But he had a considerably older brother, Maurice, who got caught up in the 1890s mania for X-rays and decided, against the wishes of their father and grandfather, on the life of a scientist. Maurice filled his younger brother’s head with compelling talk of radiation and electrons. Louis too switched to science.
