John Bardeen

Diagnoses

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Traits

Family

American physicist, a researcher of super-conductivity and solid-state physics. Working at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, Bardeen was a member of the team that developed the transistor. For this work, he shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics with American physicists William Shockley and Walter H. Brattain. In 1972 he shared the Nobel Prize in physics with American physicists Leon N. Cooper and John R. Schrieffer for the development of a theory to explain superconductivity. He was the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes in the same category. Bardeen is also responsible for a theory of superconductivity, the property of some metals to lose all electrical resistance at very low temperatures, and for a theory explaining certain properties of semiconductors. Bardeen has many honorary degrees, honors and awards. Bardeen was the son of Charles Russell Bardeen, the first graduate of the Johns Hopkins Medical School and founder of the Medical School at the University of Wisconsin. His mom, Althea Harmer, studied oriental art at the Pratt Institute and practiced interior design in Chicago. He was one of five children. Bardeen obtained his PhD in 1936 in mathematics and physics from Princeton University. A staff member of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, from 1938 to 1941, he served as principal physicist at the U.S. Naval Ordinance Laboratory in Washington, D.C. In the fall of 1945, he joined the newly formed research group in solid state physics at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was there that he became interested in semiconductors and with W.H. Brattain discovered the transistor effect in late 1947. He left Bell Labs in 1951 to become Professor of Electrical Engineering and of Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he was Professor and Emeritus Professor. During his sixty year scientific career, he made significant contributions to almost every aspect of condensed matter physics from his early work on the electronic behavior of metals, the surface properties of semiconductors and the theory of diffusion of atoms in crystals to his most recent work on quasi-one-dimensional metals. In his eighty-third year, he continued to publish original scientific papers. In 1938, he married Jane Maxwell and had three kids, James, William and Elizabeth. While at university, he competed on the varsity swim team and later, enjoyed playing golf. After his retirement in 1975 he remained a professor emeritus. Bardeen underwent exploratory surgery on 1/28/1991 that revealed he had lung cancer. The next day he was in good spirits, with his family at this side, but died on 1/30/1991 after suffering cardiac arrest, Champaign, IL. age 82. Bardeen was named by Life magazine September 1990 as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. Link to Wikipedia biography