... having much more the state of mind of a pure theoretician than that of an experimenter or engineer, loving especially the general and philosophical view... . The central question in de Broglie's life was whether the statistical nature of atomic physics reflects an ignorance of the underlying theory or whether statistics is all that can be known. For most of his life he believed the former although as a young researcher he had at first believed that the statistics hide our ignorance. Perhaps surprisingly, he returned to this view late in his life stating that:
... sa linya sa analogous pag-aaral ng takip ng makina at Codazzi, na naglalaman ng ilang mga theorems sa pinasiyahan ibabaw at minimal ibabaw; ngunit sa kanyang ipinalimbag na bersyon na ito ng trabaho ay hindi isama ang test para sa integration ng mga problema ng equation sa kaso ng ibabaw ng rebolusyon, na kung saan nagkaroon enable Bour sa malampasan ang iba pang mga kakumpetensya para sa Academy's grand premyo.