Anderson and Compton. American physicists Carl David Anderson (1905- ) at left, and Arthur Holly Compton (1892- 1962), with the latter's cosmic ray recorder. Anderson discovered the positron (positive electron) while studying cosmic rays, that is, streams of high energy particles that fall to Earth from space. He received the Nobel prize for physics in 1936. Compton received the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his work establishing that photons have energy and momentum, and that in quantum mechanics objects display both wave and particle properties. Compton developed an ionization chamber to demonstrate that cosmic rays are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field.