Bridgman, Percy W.

Bridgman, Percy W. (Williams) (1882–1961) physicist; born in Cambridge, Mass. After earning his Ph.D. in physics at Harvard, he stayed on to teach there (1908–54), although he much preferred laboratory research to the classroom. He invented an apparatus to create extremely high pressures, proving experimentally that viscosity increases with pressure; he used this apparatus for such discoveries as a new form of phosphorous and dry ice; his work also made possible the synthesis of diamonds, quartz, and other crystals. For this work he won the 1946 Nobel Prize in physics. In works such as The Nature of Physical Theory (1936) he argued that concepts in physics had to be interpreted through experimental operations.