John Bardeen Grady Pipkin March 4, 2003 ELEC-424 Department of Electrical Engineering The Citadel
John Bardeen was a brilliant electrical engineer and physicist who made some amazing breakthrough in the areas of superconductivity and that of the transistor. His discoveries have helped make a lot of the things that we as a society take for granted; things like the computer and the television. Without his work, these things would not have been possible for maybe many years to come. John Bardeen was born on May 28, 1908 in Madison, Wisconsin (1). His parents were Althea Harmer and D. Charles R. Bardeen, professor of anatomy and dean of the medical school at the University of Wisconsin (2). John had two younger brothers, Thomas and William, and a sister, Helen (2). After his mother died when he was 12, his father was remarried to Ruth Hames and had another daughter. John attended public school until the third grade when he transferred to University High School, skipped three grades and began as a seventh grader (2). There he found his love of mathematics and excelled. He was able to take college Algebra at the age of 10 and never slowed down. After graduating from Madison Central High School in 1923, he went on to study electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin and earned a bachelor degree in 1928 and master's degree in 1929. He went on to get a doctorate some time later in 1936 from Princeton University with a mathematical thesis on the work function of metals (4). His advisor at Princeton was Eugene Wigner (1). Although his schooling was that of an electrical engineer, he worked as both engineer and physicist. In 1929 and '30, he worked as research assistant in electrical engineering investigating geophysical and other problems with professor Leo J Peters (4). In 1930, John, along with Peters, took a position at Gulf Research and Development Corporation in Pittsburgh (3). There he worked on applications of geophysics to
petroleum prospecting (1). Although making good money, 3000 per year, especially for the depression, he resigned and continued his formal education and earned his doctorate (3). Between 1935 and '38, he was a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard where he investigated problems in the physics of metals with Percy Bridgman and J.H. Vleck (4). Bridgman was the world's leading authority on high-pressure physics and Vleck would later win the Nobel Prize in '77 for research on the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered structures (3). In 1938, Bardeen was married to Jane Maxwell (4). Together, they had three children: James Maxwell, William Allen, and Elizabeth Ann (3). From 1938 to '41, he was assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin. During this time, he made his first attempt at a theory of superconductivity (4). In a super-conducting medium, resistance drops to zero below the critical temperature and currents, once begun, flow indefinitely. In 1933, it was discovered that a property of superconductors is that they exclude magnetic fields from their interiors. Fritz and Heinz London described this property of superconductors in terms of macroscopic electrodynamic potentials (4). Fritz, in that same year, suggested that superconductivity was a quantum effect manifested on the macroscopic scale. It would be more than 20 years before this was described on the microscopic scale (4). John Bardeen's first attempt at a theory of superconductivity was based on the idea of a gap in the energy levels available to electrons. These electrons in the superconducting state would be unable to absorb energy quanta unless they were large
enough to carry them over the gap into normal conductivity. These electrons would in tern be trapped in the superconducting states. Bardeen suggested that the gap would arise from the interactions of electrons in a conductor with static displacements of crystal lattice. This theory was unsuccessful in explaining the phenomena. (4) In 1941, Bardeen left the University of Wisconsin for a position at the Naval Ordinance Research Laboratory and stayed with them until the end of World War II (1). While there he worked on under water ordinance and minesweeping (4). In 1945, Bardeen was hired by Bell Telephone Laboratories and worked with William Shockley in the semiconductor research division. There he determined why Shockley's design for a transistor did not work and along with Walter H. Brattain, design the first practical semiconductor amplifier, the transistor (4). This early transistor was demonstrated on Dec. 16, 1947 and earned all three the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. In 1950, Bardeen's interest in superconductivity was reawakened by the discovery of the isotope effect (4). Bardeen concluded that the interaction of electrons with ions in a crystal lattice must play an important part in superconductivity, but he was unable to explain it (4). In 1950, the Ginzburg-Landau equations appeared and gave a description of the ordering of electrons in a superconductor, but they could not explain the cause of the ordering (4). In 1951, Bardeen left Bell Labs for a professorship at the University of Illinois. In 1955, Bardeen again continued his research on superconductors with the aid of graduate student J.R. Schrieffer and Leon N. Cooper. (4) In 1956, Cooper made a discovery that explained the energy gap in the energy levels available to electrons. With this discovery, the three were able to justify the
equations of Ginzburg and Ladau and London's description of the magnetic properties of superconductors. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 for their successful model of superconductors. (4) John Bardeen's most important contributions to his field were the modeling of the superconductor and the development of the transistor. Both of these accomplishments earned him two Nobel Prizes in the same discipline, Physics, a feat that has never been done by anyone else. Along with his two Nobel Prizes, Bardeen also earned many other awards. In 1952, he earned the Stuart and Ballentine Medal of the Franklin Institute. In '55 he earned the John Scott Medal of the city of Philadelphia. In '54, he was elected to the National Academy of Science and won the Oliver E. Buckley Solid-State Physics Prize of the American Physical Society. In 1962, he was given the Fritz London Award. (3) In 1975, Bardeen began as emeritus professor at the University of Illinois, were he worked until his death in 1991 (4). He died of heart failure after an operation that had revealed the presence of lung cancer (1). One last honor was given to Bardeen in 1994 when the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society established the John Bardeen Award that recognized individuals who have made outstanding contributions and shown leadership in the field of electronic materials (4). John Bardeen made some great leaps in the field of electrical engineering and that of physics. He was a brilliant individual from early childhood until his death. His contributions to his field will be appreciated for many years to come.
Works Cited 1. "John Bardeen." World of Scientific Discovery, 2 nd ed. The Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/biorc 2. "John Bardeen." Notable Scientists: From 1900 to the Present. The Gale Group, 2001. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/biorc 3. "John Bardeen." World of Computer Science. 2 vols. The Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/biorc 4. "John Bardeen." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2 nd ed. 17 vols. The Gale Group, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/biorc