...
The modern duality about the nature of light starts from Huygens - Newton duality about the nature of light, when Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton proposed competing theories of light: light was thought either to consist of waves (Huygens) or of particles (Newton).
Huygens and Newton
Newton was interested in light from very early on in his career, the work that first brought him to the attention of the scientific community was his experimental investigation of colour, and his invention of the ‘Newtonian’ reflecting telescope (published in 1672). However this work provided no theory of how light worked, and Newton made attempts at this for many years. For various reasons he favoured a particle theory of light – the explanation of light propagating in straight lines, except at interfaces, was then easily understood. Still, light particles were acted upon by an invisible aether.
...
He gave the first theory of wave propagation, showing, amongst other things how they could be built up from ‘elementary wavelets’, radiated in circular patterns from multiple sources.
Compton
Although Max Planck and Albert Einstein postulated that light could behave as both a wave and a particle, it was Arthur Compton who finally proved that this was possible. His experiment involved scattering photons off electrons and offered proof for what we now refer to as the Compton effect.
...
Compton, Arthur H. “ A Quantum Theory Of the Scattering of X-Rays by Light Elements.” Physical Review Phys. Rev. 21, no. 5 (1923): 483–502. doi:10.1103/physrev.21.483
Dr. James E. Parks. “The Compton Effect-- Compton Scattering and Gamma Ray Spectroscopy” Department of Physics and Astronomy 401 Nielsen Physics Building The University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1200. Revision 3.00 (January 6, 2015).
Shailesh R. Kadakia, “Revolution; Light is a wave: Revisiting the outcome of light’s particle nature experiments”: 13-18.
“Compton Scattering.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed May 15, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/compton_scattering.
“Light.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed May 16, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/light.
“Wave–Particle Duality.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed May 15, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wave–particle_duality.
“Light.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed May 15, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/light.
“Compton Scattering.” Compton Scattering. Accessed May 15, 2015. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/comptint.html.
Modern Physics, spring 2015