Bardeen, John

Bardeen, John (bärdēn`), 1908–91, American physicist, b. Madison, Wis., grad. Univ. of Wisconsin (B.S. 1928, M.S. 1929), Ph.D. Princeton, 1936. He was a research physicist at the Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1945 to 1951. In 1951 he became professor of electrical engineering and physics at the Univ. of Illinois. He is known for his studies of semiconductors and other aspects of solid state physics. He shared with Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in developing the transistor. He also shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon Cooper and John Schreiffer for development of a theory of superconductivity, becoming the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice in the same field.

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Bardeen, John

Bardeen.

(credit: Courtesy of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

(born May 23, 1908, Madison, Wis., U.S.—died Jan. 30, 1991, Boston, Mass.) U.S. physicist. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton University. He worked for the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory during World War II, after which he worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories. His work there led to his sharing a 1956 Nobel Prize with William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain for the invention of the transistor. In 1972 he again shared a Nobel Prize, this time with Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer for developing the theory of superconductivity (1957); this theory (called the BCS theory, for Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) is the basis for all later theoretical work in superconductivity. Bardeen was also the author of a theory explaining certain properties of semiconductors.

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Bardeen, John (1908–91) physicist; born in Madison, Wis. He worked as a geophysicist at Gulf Research and Development Corporation (1930–33) before obtaining a Ph.D. from Harvard (1936). He taught at the University of Minnesota (1938–41), served as a civilian physicist for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (1941–45), then joined Bell Telephone Laboratories (1945–51). Together with Walter Brattain and William Shockley, he developed the point-contact transistor (1947), for which they shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics. Bardeen became a professor at the University of Illinois (1951–75); he shared a second Nobel Prize (1972) with his students Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer for the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory of superconductivity. Their research was a breakthrough in electromagnet design, and made Bardeen the first person to win the Nobel Prize for physics twice.

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Bardeen, John 

Born May 23, 1908, in Madison. American physicist, one of the founders of the theory of superconductivity.

Bardeen graduated from the University of Wisconsin (1928). From 1945 to 1951 he was an employee of Bell Telephone Laboratories and in 1951 became a professor at the University of Illinois. His basic scientific work was done on the theory of solids and the physics of low temperatures. In 1948, together with W. Brattain and W. Shockley, he made the first transistor. Bardeen was the first to construct the microscopic theory of superconductivity (1957, in collaboration with others). In 1956 he received the Nobel Prize.

WORKS

“Elektroprovodnosf metallov.” Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 1941, vol. 25, no. 1.
Novoe v izuchenii sverkhprovodimosti. Moscow, 1962. (Translated from English; in collaboration with J. Schiffer.)