Bardeen, John

Bardeen, John (1908–1991), theoretical physicist.Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin, where his father, George Russell Bardeen, was dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School. After earning an M.A. in electrical engineering at Wisconsin, Bardeen worked for three years at Gulf Research Laboratory in Pittsburgh and then entered Princeton University's graduate program in mathematics, where he embarked on a study of electron interactions in solids. As a junior fellow at Harvard (1935–1938) he consolidated his characteristic experimentally grounded pragmatic approach to physics. While an assistant professor of physics at the University of Minnesota (1938–1941) he began work on superconductivity, the phenomenon in which certain metals and alloys abruptly lose all electrical resistance below a certain temperature—a phenomenon that had baffled physicists since its discovery in 1911.

After directing an engineering group at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C., during World War II, Bardeen joined William Shockley's new semiconductor research group at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. Here he launched the group on a program of basic research that in December 1947 led to his invention, with the experimental physicist Walter Brattain, of the first transistor, a key component in the electronics revolution. For this achievement he shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for physics.

Conflicts with Shockley over further transistor research at Bell Labs led Bardeen in 1951 to move to the University of Illinois where, with Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer, he solved the puzzle of superconductivity by 1957. Central to their theory was the attractive interaction between electrons inside superconductors resulting from the coupling of electrons to quantized sound waves in the solid. For this he shared a second Nobel Prize in 1972, making him the first person ever awarded two Nobel Prizes in the same field.

Bardeen continued to consult for businesses after his return to academia, including Haloid (which became Xerox) and General Electric. He served on numerous high‐level government scientific‐advisory bodies under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan. As a member of Reagan's White House Science Council, he strongly opposed the Strategic Defense Initiative. Bardeen remained active in cutting‐edge research until his death.
See also Physical Sciences; Science: Since 1945.

Bibliography

Lillian Hoddeson et al., eds., Out of the Crystal Maze: A History of Solid State Physics, 1900–1960, 1992.
Michael Riordan and and Lillian Hoddeson , Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, 1997.

Lillian Hoddeson