Robert Andrews Millikan

About Robert Andrews Millikan

Who is it?: Physicist
Birth Day: March 22, 1868
Birth Place: Morrison, United States
Succeeded by: Lee Alvin DuBridge
Alma mater: Oberlin College Columbia University
Known for: Oil drop experiment measuring the charge of the electron Photoelectric effect Cosmic ray physics
Spouse(s): Greta née Blanchard
Children: Clark Blanchard Glenn Allan Max Franklin
Awards: Comstock Prize (1913) IEEE Edison Medal (1922) Nobel Prize in Physics (1923) Hughes Medal (1923) Faraday Lectureship Prize (1924) Matteucci Medal (1925) ASME Medal (1926) Franklin Medal (1937) Oersted Medal (1940) Medal for Merit (1949)
Fields: Physics
Institutions: University of Chicago California Institute of Technology
Thesis: On the polarization of light emitted from the surfaces of incandescent solids and liquids. (1895)
Doctoral advisor: Ogden Nicholas Rood
Other academic advisors: Mihajlo Pupin Albert A. Michelson Walther Nernst
Doctoral students: Chung-Yao Chao Robley D. Evans Harvey Fletcher C. C. Lauritsen Leonard Benedict Loeb William Pickering Ralph A. Sawyer
Service/branch: United States Army
Years of service: 1917–1918
Rank: Lieutenant Colonel
Unit: Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps

Robert Andrews Millikan

Robert Andrews Millikan was born on March 22, 1868 in Morrison, United States, is Physicist. Robert Andrews Millikan was an eminent American experimental physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for his work on photoelectric effect. Born in Illinois, he spent his childhood in a rural setting and attended the Maquoketa High School, Iowa. Thereafter, he did his bachelor’s in the Classics from Oberlin College. It was after he enrolled in college, that he grew interested in experimentation and problem solving. In the forthcoming years, he graduated with a master’s degree and doctorate in Physics and went on to pursue a career in science. Throughout his career, Robert Millikan was deeply involved in research, writing and academics. His most significant works in the field of physics include measurement of the elementary electronic charge, determination of the accurate value of Planck’s constant, research on the cosmic rays and understanding the photoelectric effect. As a teacher, he was involved with the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology. He authored and co-authored approximately a dozen books and several of his works were later converted to text books and guidebooks.
Robert Andrews Millikan is a member of Scientists

Does Robert Andrews Millikan Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Robert Andrews Millikan has been died on December 19, 1953(1953-12-19) (aged 85)\nSan Marino, California, U.S..

🎂 Robert Andrews Millikan - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

When Robert Andrews Millikan die, Robert Andrews Millikan was 85 years old.

Popular As Robert Andrews Millikan
Occupation Scientists
Age 85 years old
Zodiac Sign Aries
Born March 22, 1868 (Morrison, United States)
Birthday March 22
Town/City Morrison, United States
Nationality United States

🌙 Zodiac

Robert Andrews Millikan’s zodiac sign is Aries. According to astrologers, the presence of Aries always marks the beginning of something energetic and turbulent. They are continuously looking for dynamic, speed and competition, always being the first in everything - from work to social gatherings. Thanks to its ruling planet Mars and the fact it belongs to the element of Fire (just like Leo and Sagittarius), Aries is one of the most active zodiac signs. It is in their nature to take action, sometimes before they think about it well.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Robert Andrews Millikan was born in the Year of the Dragon. A powerful sign, those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Dragon are energetic and warm-hearted, charismatic, lucky at love and egotistic. They’re natural born leaders, good at giving orders and doing what’s necessary to remain on top. Compatible with Monkey and Rat.

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Famous Quotes:

At the close of my sophomore year [...] my Greek professor [...] asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the preparatory department during the next year. To my reply that I did not know any physics at all, his answer was, "Anyone who can do well in my Greek can teach physics." "All right," said I, "you will have to take the consequences, but I will try and see what I can do with it." I at once purchased an Avery's Elements of Physics, and spent the greater part of my summer vacation of 1889 at home – trying to master the subject. [...] I doubt if I have ever taught better in my life than in my first course in physics in 1889. I was so intensely interested in keeping my knowledge ahead of that of the class that they may have caught some of my own interest and enthusiasm.

Biography/Timeline

1868

Robert Andrews Millikan was born on March 22, 1868, in Morrison, Illinois. Millikan went to high school in Maquoketa, Iowa. Millikan received a bachelor's degree in the classics from Oberlin College in 1891 and his doctorate in physics from Columbia University in 1895 – he was the first to earn a Ph.D. from that department.

1891

Millikan graduated from Oberlin College in 1891 and obtained his doctorate at Columbia University in 1895. In 1896 he became an assistant at the University of Chicago, where he became a full professor in 1910. In 1909 Millikan began a series of experiments to determine the electric charge carried by a single electron. He began by measuring the course of charged water droplets in an electric field. The results suggested that the charge on the droplets is a multiple of the elementary electric charge, but the experiment was not accurate enough to be convincing. He obtained more precise results in 1910 with his famous oil-drop experiment in which he replaced water (which tended to evaporate too quickly) with oil.

1897

Although at the time of Millikan's oil-drop experiments it was becoming clear that there exist such things as subatomic particles, not everyone was convinced. Experimenting with cathode rays in 1897, J. J. Thomson had discovered negatively charged 'corpuscles', as he called them, with a charge-to-mass ratio 1840 times that of a hydrogen ion. Similar results had been found by George FitzGerald and Walter Kaufmann. Most of what was then known about electricity and magnetism, however, could be explained on the basis that charge is a continuous variable; in much the same way that many of the properties of light can be explained by treating it as a continuous wave rather than as a stream of photons.

1902

In 1902 he married Greta Ervin Blanchard (1876-1955). They had three sons: Clark Blanchard, Glenn Allan, and Max Franklin.

1905

When Einstein published his seminal 1905 paper on the particle theory of light, Millikan was convinced that it had to be wrong, because of the vast body of evidence that had already shown that light was a wave. He undertook a decade-long experimental program to test Einstein's theory, which required building what he described as "a machine shop in vacuo" in order to prepare the very clean metal surface of the photo electrode. His results published in 1914 confirmed Einstein's predictions in every detail, but Millikan was not convinced of Einstein's interpretation, and as late as 1916 he wrote, "Einstein's photoelectric equation... cannot in my judgment be looked upon at present as resting upon any sort of a satisfactory theoretical foundation," even though "it actually represents very accurately the behavior" of the photoelectric effect. In his 1950 autobiography, however, he simply declared that his work "scarcely permits of any other interpretation than that which Einstein had originally suggested, namely that of the semi-corpuscular or photon theory of light itself".

1908

Starting in 1908, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Millikan worked on an oil-drop experiment in which he measured the charge on a single electron. J. J. Thomson had already discovered the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. However, the actual charge and mass values were unknown. Therefore, if one of these two values were to be discovered, the other could easily be calculated. Millikan and his then graduate student Harvey Fletcher used the oil-drop experiment to measure the charge of the electron (as well as the electron mass, and Avogadro's number, since their relation to the electron charge was known).

1914

In 1914 Millikan took up with similar skill the experimental verification of the equation introduced by Albert Einstein in 1905 to describe the photoelectric effect. He used this same research to obtain an accurate value of Planck’s constant. In 1921 Millikan left the University of Chicago to become Director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. There he undertook a major study of the radiation that the Physicist Victor Hess had detected coming from outer space. Millikan proved that this radiation is indeed of extraterrestrial origin, and he named it "cosmic rays." As chairman of the Executive Council of Caltech (the school's governing body at the time) from 1921 until his retirement in 1945, Millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the United States. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953.

1917

In 1917, solar Astronomer George Ellery Hale convinced Millikan to begin spending several months each year at the Throop College of Technology, a small academic institution in Pasadena, California, that Hale wished to transform into a major center for scientific research and education. A few years later Throop College became the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Millikan left the University of Chicago in order to become Caltech's "chairman of the executive council" (effectively its president). Millikan would serve in that position from 1921 to 1945. At Caltech most of his scientific research focused on the study of "cosmic rays" (a term which he coined). In the 1930s he entered into a debate with Arthur Compton over whether cosmic rays were composed of high-energy photons (Millikan's view) or charged particles (Compton's view). Millikan thought his cosmic ray photons were the "birth cries" of new atoms continually being created to counteract entropy and prevent the heat death of the universe. Compton would eventually be proven right by the observation that cosmic rays are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field (and so must be charged particles).

1923

Professor Millikan took sole credit, in return for Harvey Fletcher claiming full authorship on a related result for his dissertation. Millikan went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics, in part for this work, and Fletcher kept the agreement a secret until his death. After a publication on his first results in 1910, contradictory observations by Felix Ehrenhaft started a controversy between the two physicists. After improving his setup, Millikan published his seminal study in 1913.

1926

A religious man and the son of a minister, in his later life Millikan argued strongly for a complementary relationship between Christian faith and science. He dealt with this in his Terry Lectures at Yale in 1926–27, published as Evolution in Science and Religion. A more controversial belief of his was eugenics. This led to his association with the Human Betterment Foundation and his praising of San Marino, California, for being "the westernmost outpost of Nordic civilization ... [with] a population which is twice as Anglo-Saxon as that existing in New York, Chicago, or any of the great cities of this country."

1927

Since Millikan's work formed some of the basis for modern particle physics, it is ironic that he was rather conservative in his opinions about 20th century developments in physics, as in the case of the photon theory. Another Example is that his textbook, as late as the 1927 version, unambiguously states the existence of the ether, and mentions Einstein's theory of relativity only in a noncommittal note at the end of the caption under Einstein's portrait, stating as the last in a list of accomplishments that he was "author of the special theory of relativity in 1905 and of the general theory of relativity in 1914, both of which have had great success in explaining otherwise unexplained phenomena and in predicting new ones."

1938

In 1938, he wrote a short passage to be placed in the Westinghouse Time Capsules.

1947

Robert Millikan was Vice Chairman of the National Research Council during World War I. During that time, he helped to develop anti-submarine and meteorological devices. He received the Chinese Order of Jade. In his private life, Millikan was an enthusiastic tennis player. He was married and had three sons, the eldest of whom, Clark B. Millikan, became a prominent aerodynamic Engineer. Another son, Glenn, also a Physicist, married the daughter (Clare) of George Leigh Mallory of "Because it's there" Mount Everest fame. Glenn was killed in a climbing accident in Cumberland Mountains in 1947.

1953

Millikan died of a heart attack at his home in San Marino, California in 1953 at age 85, and was interred in the "Court of Honor" at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

1982

On January 26, 1982, he was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 37¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp.

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