John Bardeen
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John Bardeen (May 23 1908 – January 30 1991) was an American physicist. He is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in Physics, in 1956 for the transistor, along with William Bradford Shockley and Walter Brattain, and in 1972 for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity together with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer, now called BCS theory.
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Early Life And Education
John Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin to Charles and Althea Bardeen. Charles was a professor of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and helped start its medical school. Althea, before marrying, had taught at the Dewey Laboratory School and run an interior decorating business; after marriage she was an active figure in the art world.
Bardeen's talent for mathematics was recognized early. His seventh grade mathematics teacher encouraged Bardeen in pursuing advanced work, and years later, Bardeen credited him for "first exciting [his] interest in mathematics."[1] (http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309084083/html/28.html)
Bardeen graduated high school at age fifteen, even though he could have graduated several years earlier. His graduation was postponed due to taking additional courses at another high school and also partly because of his mother's death. He entered the University of Wisconsin in 1923.
While in college he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity. He raised the needed membership fees partly by playing billiards; he eventually became a billiards champion.
Bardeen received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1928. He had taken all the graduate courses in physics and mathematics that had interested him, and in fact, graduated in five years, one more than usual; this allowed him time to also complete a Master's thesis, supervised by Leo J. Peters. His mentors in mathematics were Warren Weaver and Edward Van Vleck. His main physics mentor was John Hasbrouck van Vleck, but he was also much influenced by visiting scholars such as Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, and Arnold Sommerfeld.
Bardeen stayed on for some time at Wisconsin furthering his studies,but eventually went to work for three years at Gulf Research Laboratories, the research arm of the Gulf Oil Company, based in Pittsburgh. After the work failed to keep his interest, he applied and was accepted to the graduate program in mathematics at Princeton University.
Bardeen studied both mathematics and physics as a graduate student, ending up writing his thesis for the mathematics Ph.D. on a problem in solid-state physics, under Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1936. Due to his father's death in 1935, Bardeen was not able to finish his thesis before he went to Harvard University on a postdoctoral fellowship and had to finish it during his first term there.
While at Princeton, he met Jane Maxwell during a visit to his old friends in Pittsburgh. He would marry her before his time at Harvard had ended.
Later Life and Career
In the fall of 1938, Bardeen started in his new role as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.
In 1941, the world was embroiled in war, and Bardeen was convinced by his colleagues to take a leave of absence and work for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. He would stay there for four years. In 1943 he was invited to join the Manhattan Project, but he refused, since he did not want to uproot his family. He received the Meritorious Civilian Service Award for his service at the NOL.
After the end of World War Two, Bardeen started seeking a return to academia, but the University of Minnesota did not realize the importance of the young field of solid-state physics. They offered him only a small raise. Bardeen's expertise in solid-state physics made him invaluable to Bell Labs, which was just starting a solid-state division. Remembering the lack of support he had received previously from the university to pursue his research, he decided to take a lucrative offer from Bell Labs in 1945.
Bell Labs
In October 1945 John Bardeen started work at Bell Labs. He moved his family to Summit, New Jersey, a quick bus ride from the Murray Hill research campus. He rekindled his friendship with Walter Brattain, who he had met previously through his brother; Brattain's brother had also been a Princeton graduate student.
Returning to Academia
Bardeen joined the engineering faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1951. His work together with Leon Cooper (as in "Cooper pairs") and Robert Schrieffer led to the standard theory of superconductivity, named after them, "BCS theory". For this work he has been awarded a Nobel Prize in 1972.
Xerox
Bardeen was also an important advisor to Xerox Corporation. Though quiet by nature, he took the uncharacteristic step of urging Xerox executives to keep their California research center, Xerox PARC, afloat when the parent company was suspicious that its research center would amount to little.
References
- Hoddeson, Lillian and Vicki Daitch. True Genius: the Life and Science of John Bardeen. National Academy Press, 2002. (ISBN 0309084083)
External links
- Biography from PBS (http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/bardeen/)
- Biography from the Nobel Foundation (http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1972/bardeen-bio.html)
- Biography from Nobel-Winners.com (http://www.nobel-winners.com/Physics/john_bardeen.html)bn:জন বার্ডীন
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