Albert Einstein adopted a particle model and used Plancks theoretical explanation of black body radiation to apply it to the photoelectric effect.
Einstein propsed that:
-The energy of light is not evenly spread out over the wavefront, but is concentrated in packets of energy- photons.
-The energy of each photon is given by E = hf and this energy is used partly to break the electron away from its atom.
-A photon could give up all or none of its energy to one electron but it could not give only a part of it. Any excess energy gives the photoelectron its kinetic energy KE = hf work function
-Intense light was not light with more energy, it was more photons each with the same energy. Therefore as intensity of light of an appropriate frequency increased, photoemission increased as more photoelectrons could be emitted.
-Photons of light below the threshold frequency did not carry sufficient energy so no photoelectrons could be emitted regardless of the intensity.
Einstein applied it to something practical, and in doing so he made it credible. However recently there as been debate as to who actually was responsible for the quantum theory. Planck definitely put forward that the energy of a quantum is proportional to its frequency, but Planck did not propose a particle theory of light before Einstein. So is Einstein really the founder of quantum theory? Debate still rages among physics historians about the true originator of quantum theory.