John Bardeen

Physicist

• Born: May 23, 1908
• Birthplace: Madison, Wisconsin
• Died: January 30, 1991
• Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

American physicist

Bardeen is one of the twentieth century’s great solid-state theorists. His co-invention, with Walter Brattain, of the transistor began the revolution in electronics and computer technology. His superconductivity theory, or BCS-theory, had major implications in most areas of physics.

Areas of achievement Physics, engineering, invention and technology

Early Life

John Bardeen (bahr-DEEN), the second of five children, was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to Althea Harmer and Charles R. Bardeen. Charles was an anatomy professor and dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, and Althea was an interior decorator. Bardeen was a child prodigy who, at age nine, skipped from third grade in elementary school to seventh grade at the University of Wisconsin’s high school in Madison. At the start of twelfth grade, he transferred to the public high school for its better laboratory facilities. After taking a few extra courses, Bardeen graduated from high school at age fifteen, the same year as his older brother William. Though he was studying with much older children, Bardeen thoroughly enjoyed playing games and sports with his peers and with his older brother. He played golf from a young age, and the sport turned into a lifelong passion. He was also a three-year varsity swimmer and water polo player at the University of Wisconsin. By all accounts reserved, Bardeen enjoyed his days with a college fraternity and maintained friendships with many types of people throughout his life. His other nonacademic pursuits included billiards, bowling, and playing cards.

Bardeen earned bachelor’s (1928) and master’s (1929) degrees in electrical engineering from Wisconsin. In his first year as a graduate student, he also studied quantum mechanics with American physicist John H. van Vleck (a 1977 Nobel laureate) and British theoretical physicist Paul A. M. Dirac (a 1933 Nobel laureate). In 1930, Bardeen took time away from his studies to work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a geophysicist for Gulf Research and Development Corporation, where he invented a new form of electromagnetic oil prospecting. It was in Pittsburgh that he met his future wife, Jane Maxwell (they married in 1938).

In 1933, Bardeen began his doctoral studies in mathematical physics at Princeton University, where he had hoped to study under Albert Einstein. Einstein was not accepting graduate students, however, so Bardeen became the second research student for Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner (a 1963 Nobel laureate) in Princeton’s Mathematics Department. Before Bardeen completed his Ph.D. in 1936, he studied at Harvard University, working as a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows(1935-1938), under the guidance of van Vleck and American physicist Percy Williams Bridgman (a 1946 Nobel laureate).

Life’s Work

Surrounded as a graduate student by many of the world’s most brilliant scientists, Bardeen’s interests were broad: mathematics, electrical engineering, solid-state and nuclear physics, and superconductivity. It did not take him long to make significant contributions to industry and society. During his time as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota (1938-1941), the scientific requirements of World War II took him to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C. (1941-1945). Following the war, American Telephone & Telegraph’s (AT&T) Bell Telephone Laboratories recruited Bardeen to work on solid-state devices. The Bardeens moved with their three children (James, William, and Elizabeth) to New Jersey.

Bardeen, a solid-state theorist, shared an office with experimentalists Walter Brattain and Gerald Pearson, a circumstance that turned fortuitous. As members of a team headed by William Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain were tasked with finding a solid-state device that could replace the bulky, unreliable, and expensive vacuum tube and electromechanical switches used in AT&T’s telephone network. During the war, Bell Labs worked with the semiconductor elements germanium and silicon, and its scientists thought that semiconductors could make reliable solid-state amplifiers. After two years of intense research, Bardeen and Brattain observed and effectively modeled the phenomenon of carrier injection and invented the point-contact transistor using the semiconductor germanium (December, 1947). With that transistor, they demonstrated an amplification of a spoken audio signal. Bell Labs announced the transistor in June, 1948.

In 1956, a surprised Bardeen received his first Nobel Prize in Physics for research on semiconductors and discovery of the transistor effect, an honor he shared with Brattain and Shockley. Transistors amplify or switch electrical signals and are the building blocks of modern solid-state electronic devices. Hearing-aid manufacturers were among the first to market commercial transistor products, and Jane Bardeen was given one of the first transistorized hearing aids.

To pursue his broader interests (in particular, superconductivity theory) Bardeen left Bell Labs in 1951 and became a professor of electrical engineering and of physics at the University of Illinois in Urbana. He held this post until his retirement in 1975, and stayed on as professor emeritus for the remainder of his life. Although a theorist, Bardeen preferred working with experimentalists so that he could analyze the data and base his theories on experimental clues.

Bardeen had long been intrigued by the process of superconductivity. In the 1950’s, the only known superconductors were certain metals. Superconductors have no electrical resistance at very low temperatures. With no electrical resistance, superconductors efficiently carry a high-current density for long periods of time without heat loss. One highly successful application of superconductivity is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, which use liquid helium-cooled superconducting magnets.

From the time of its discovery in 1911 to the mid-1950’s, scientists had observed superconductivity but could not explain the physical mechanism responsible for the phenomenon. In 1957, Bardeen, his graduate student Bob Schrieffer, and postdoctoral student Leon Cooper developed the first successful theory of the superconductivity of metals, known as the Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (or BCS) theory. The team’s seminal work on superconductivity was one of the major achievements in physics of the twentieth century and for which Bardeen won, in 1972, his second Nobel Prize in physics (which he shared with Cooper and Schrieffer). Bardeen kept abreast of scientific advancements after he became professor emeritus. He was thrilled about the 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductors.

Bardeen’s contributions to government and industry were significant. He served on the Science Advisory Committee (1959-1962) under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy and on President Ronald Reagan’s White House Science Council (1982-1983). Among his numerous awards, Bardeen was a 1977 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. He held a long relationship with Haloid Company (renamed Xerox Corporation), where he consulted between 1952 and 1982 and was a member of its board of directors from 1961 to 1974. His advice was crucial for the research and development behind the first xerographic processes and materials and later for laser xerographic printing.

General Electric hired Bardeen as a consultant, and he had lifelong friendships with the directors of Sony Corporation’s research laboratories in Japan. Indeed, Sony established the John Bardeen Chair in Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois in 1989. The first recipient of the Sony professorship was Nick Holonyak, Jr., Bardeen’s first graduate student, inventor of the first practical light-emitting diode (LED), and solid-state laser technology pioneer. In his tribute to Bardeen for the National Academy of Engineering (Memorial Tributes 6 [1993]: 2-11), Holonyak stated that Bardeen, “more than anyone else, can be said to be the ’godfather’ of modern electronics.” Bardeen’s final scientific article appeared in the December, 1990, issue of Physics Today, just a month before his death. Bardeen learned he had lung cancer just one day before he died, on January 30, 1991, of cardiac arrest.

Significance

The first person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field, Bardeen’s discoveries about the conductivity of solids form the basis for much of modern electronics. He was modest, had integrity, and was generous, never taking center stage and giving his colleagues and students their due credit.

Bardeen had incredible analytical skills and was able to solve problems in a way no other scientist had before him. He was revered by colleagues around the world, many of whom gathered in March of 1992 for the Bardeen Memorial Symposium at the meeting of the American Physical Society in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1990, Life magazine named Bardeen one of the hundred most influential Americans of the twentieth century. Bardeen’s influence stretched into the twenty-first century as companies founded by his students continued to thrive.

Bibliography

Gonzalo, Julio A., and Carmen Aragó López, eds. Great Solid State Physicists of the Twentieth Century. River Edge, N.J.: World Scientific, 2003. Based on a plenary session at the Tenth International Meeting on Ferroelectricity in Madrid, Spain, in 2001, the editors focus on the achievements of John Bardeen, William H. Bragg, William L. Bragg, Peter Debye, and Lev Landau. Includes full transcripts of Bardeen’s Nobel lectures and speeches given by Bardeen’s Nobel Prize presenters.

Hoddeson, Lillian, and Vicki Daitch. True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen The Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2002. Fascinating biography, in which the authors conducted many oral history interviews with Bardeen’s family and colleagues.

Matricon, Jean, and Georges Waysand, eds. The Cold Wars: A History of Superconductivity. Translated by Charles Glashausser. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Assumes reader has basic knowledge of physics. Provides a comprehensive history of superconductivity, including the science behind it, discoveries, and how scientists dealt with social and political issues.

Riordan, Michael, and Lillian Hoddeson. Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Compelling histories of the transistor and semiconductor, and their inventors.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: January 1, 1925: Bell Labs Is Formed.

1941-1970: December 23, 1947: Invention of the Transistor; 1957: Sony Develops the Pocket-Sized Transistor Radio; February-August, 1957: Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer Explain Superconductivity.

1971-2000: September, 1972: Gell-Mann Formulates the Theory of Quantum Chromodynamics.