'John Bardeen' (
May 23 1908 –
January 30 1991) was an
American physicist and
electrical engineer. 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.
The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, allowing the
Information Age to occur, and made possible the development of almost every modern electronical device, from
telephones to
computers to
missiles. His developments in superconductivity, which won him his second Nobel, are used in medical advances such as
CAT scans and
MRI.
In 1990, Bardeen appeared on ''
LIFE Magazine'' 's list of "100 Most Influential Americans of the Century."
[1]
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."
[2]
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-Madison in 1923. While in college he joined the
Zeta Psi fraternity. He raised the needed membership fees partly by playing
billiards. He was initiated as a member of
Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society.
Bardeen received his
Bachelor's degree and
Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison 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 primary 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 he 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
mathematical physics 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 three-year 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 Princeton 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 II, 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 and first Nobel Prize
In October 1945 John Bardeen began 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. On December 23, 1947, Bardeen, Brattain, and
William Shockley (Bardeen's manager at the time) unveiled the transistor, which earned them the Nobel Prize in
physics in 1956.
The "transistor" (a combination of "transfer" and "resistor") was 50 times smaller than the
vacuum tubes it replaced in
televisions and
radios and allowed electrical devices to become more compact.
Shockley took the lion's share of the credit in public for the discovery, which led to a deterioration of Bardeen's relationship with Shockley.
[3]
University of Illinois
Bardeen joined the engineering faculty at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1951. His first
PhD student was
Nick Holonyak (1954), the inventor of the first
LED in 1962.
[4] Bardeen established research programs in semiconductors at the university.
He was an active professor from 1951 to 1975 and then became Professor Emeritus.
Second Nobel Prize and other awards
Bardeen worked together with
Leon Cooper and Bardeen's doctoral student
Robert Schrieffer to create the standard theory of
superconductivity -- the "
BCS theory," named after them. For this work they were awarded a
Nobel Prize in 1972.
This was Bardeen's second Nobel, a distinction shared only with
Marie Curie,
Linus Pauling and
Frederick Sanger. Bardeen gave much of his Nobel Prize money to fund the
Fritz London Memorial Lectures at
Duke University.
[5] At the time of his award, he was the first Nobelist to win twice in the same field.
[6]
Bardeen also received the
IEEE Medal of Honor in 1971 for "his profound contributions to the understanding of the conductivity of solids, to the invention of the transistor, and to the microscopic theory of superconductivity."
Bardeen was one of 11 recipients given the Third Century Award from
President George H.W. Bush in
1990 for "exceptional contributions to American society" and was granted a gold medal from the
Soviet Academy of Sciences in
1988.
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.
Death
Bardeen died of
cardiac arrest at
Brigham and Women's Hospital in
Boston, Massachusetts on January 30, 1991. While he lived in
Champaign-Urbana, he was in Boston for medical consultation.
Bardeen and his wife Jane had three children, James and William Bardeen and Elizabeth Greytak, and six grandchildren when he died.
Temperament
Bardeen was a man with a very unassuming personality. While he served as a professor for almost 40 years at the University of Illinois, he was best remembered by neighbors for throwing cookouts where he would cook for his friends, many of whom were unaware of his accomplishments at the university. He enjoyed playing
golf and going on
picnics with his family.
It has been said that Bardeen proves wrong the
stereotype of the "crazy scientist."
Lillian Hoddeson, a University of Illinois historian who wrote a book on Bardeen, said that because he "differed radically from the popular stereotype of
genius and was uninterested in appearing other than ordinary, the public and the media often overlooked him."
Legacy
In honor of Professor Bardeen, the engineering
quadrangle at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is named the Bardeen Quad.
Also in honor of Bardeen,
Sony Corporation endowed a $53 million John Bardeen professorial chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, beginning in 1990. The current John Bardeen Professor is
Nick Holonyak, Bardeen's first doctoral student and protege.
At the time of Bardeen's death, then-University of Illinois chancellor Morton Weir said, "It is a rare person whose work changes the life of every American; John's did."
References
1. John Bardeen, Nobelist, Inventor of Transistor, Dies
2. [1]
3. Diane Kormos Buchwald. ''American Scientist'' 91.2 (Mar.-Apr. 2003): 185-86.
4. Nice Guys Can Finish As Geniuses at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
5. [2]
6. Physicist John Bardeen, 82, transistor pioneer, Nobelist
★ Hoddeson, Lillian and Vicki Daitch. ''True Genius: the Life and Science of John Bardeen''. National Academy Press, 2002. (ISBN 0-309-08408-3)
Academic Progeny
★
Nick Holonyak (first PhD student, joined UIUC faculty)
★ Wolfgang J.(Ted) Poppelbaum (first Post-doctoral student, joined UIUC faculty)
External links
★
Biography from PBS
★
Biography from the Nobel Foundation
★
Biography from Nobel-Winners.com
★
IEEE History Center biography
★
Interview of John Bardeen about his experience at Princeton
★
IEEE 2nd Int. Conference on Computers, Communications and Control (ICCCC 2008), an event dedicated to the Centenary of John Bardeen (1908-1991)
★
Associated Press Obituary of John Bardeen as printed in The Boston Globe
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