Robert Andrews Millikan

Robert Andrews Millikan , 1868-1953, American physicist and educator, b. Morrison, Ill., grad. Oberlin College, 1891, Ph.D. Columbia, 1895, studied in Germany. He taught (1896-1921) physics at the Univ. of Chicago and from 1921 to 1945 was chairman of the executive council of the California Institute of Technology and director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory there. The 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded him for his measurement of the charge on the electron and for his work on the photoelectric effect . He also made important studies of cosmic rays (which he named), X rays, and physical and electric constants and wrote and lectured on the reconciliation of science and religion. His books include Science and Life (1924), Evolution in Science and Religion (1927; 7th printing with addition, 1949), Science and the New Civilization (1930), Time, Matter, and Values (1932), and Electrons (+ and -), Protons, Photons, Neutrons, Mesotrons, and Cosmic Rays (rev. ed. 1947; 1st ed. with title The Electron, 1917; enl. ed. 1935).

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1950).

Millikan, Robert Andrews (1868–1953) US physicist. His oil drop experiment enabled him to determine the electric charge of an electron. Millikan went on to study the photoelectric effect, verifying the equation of Albert Einstein and gaining a precise value for Max Planck's constant. In 1923 he received the Nobel Prize in physics.