An unusual Nobel Prize

Abstract

Summary C.-E. Guillaume received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1920 for the discovery and development of a pair of alloys that had characteristics invariant with temperature: one had constant length near ambient temperature, the other had constant Young's modulus. A recent analysis expresses retrospective surprise at this award: the objective of this short paper is to justify the award retrospectively, in terms of the continuing and impressive consequences of Guillaume's discoveries.