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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1972
John Bardeen, Leon N. Cooper, Robert Schrieffer
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1972
Nobel Prize Award Ceremony
John Bardeen
Leon N. Cooper
Robert Schrieffer
Biography
John Bardeen was born in Madison,
Wisconsin, May 23, 1908.
He attended the University High School in Madison for several
years, and graduated from Madison Central High School in 1923.
This was followed by a course in electrical engineering at the
University of
Wisconsin, where he took extra work in mathematics and
physics. After being out for a term while working in the
engineering department of the Western Electric Company at
Chicago, he graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering in
1928. He continued on at Wisconsin as a graduate research
assistant in electrical engineering for two years, working on
mathematical problems in applied geophysics and on radiation from
antennas. It was during this period that he was first introduced
to quantum theory by Professor J.H.
Van Vleck.
Professor Leo J. Peters, under whom his research in geophysics
was done, took a position at the Gulf Research Laboratories in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Bardeen followed him there and
worked during the next three years (1930-33) on the development
of methods for the interpretation of magnetic and gravitational
surveys. This was a stimulating period in which geophysical
methods were first being applied to prospecting for oil.
Because he felt his interests were in theoretical science, Dr.
Bardeen resigned his position at Gulf in 1933 to take graduate
work in mathematical physics at Princeton
University. It was here, under the leadership of Professor
E.P. Wigner, that he first became interested in solid state
physics. Before completing his thesis (on the theory of the work
function of metals) he was offered a position as Junior Fellow of
the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He spent the next three
years there working with Professors Van Vleck and Bridgman on
problems in cohesion and electrical conduction in metals and also
did some work on the level density of nuclei. The Ph.D. degree at
Princeton was awarded in 1936.
From 1938-41 Dr. Bardeen was an assistant professor of physics at
the University of
Minnesota and from 1941-45 a civilian physicist at the Naval
Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C. His war years were spent
working on the influence fields of ships for application to
underwater ordnance and minesweeping. After the war, he joined
the solid-state research group at the Bell Telephone
Laboratories, and remained there until 1951, when he was
appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering and of Physics at
the University
of Illinois. Since 1959 he has also been a member of the
Center for Advanced Study of the University.
Dr. Bardeen's main fields of research since 1945 have been
electrical conduction in semiconductors and metals, surface
properties of semiconductors, theory of superconductivity, and
diffusion of atoms in solids. The
Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 1956 to John Bardeen,
Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley for "investigations on
semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect,"
carried on at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. In 1957, Bardeen
and two colleagues, L.N. Cooper and J.R. Schrieffer, proposed the
first successful explanation of superconductivity, which has been
a puzzle since its discovery in 1908. Much of his research effort
since that time has been devoted to further extensions and
applications of the theory. Dr. Bardeen died in 1991.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1971-1980, Editor Stig Lundqvist, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
John Bardeen died on January 30, 1991.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1972
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