Percy Williams Bridgman
| Percy Williams Bridgman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
21 April 1882 Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Died | 20 August 1961 (aged 79) Randolph, New Hampshire, United States Suicide |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | Wallace Clement Sabine |
| Doctoral students |
Francis Birch Gerald Holton John C. Slater John Hasbrouck Van Vleck |
| Known for |
High pressure physics Operationalism Operational definition |
| Notable awards |
Rumford Prize (1917) Elliott Cresson Medal (1932) (1933) Nobel Prize in Physics (1946) Fellow of the Royal Society (1949) Bingham Medal (1951) |
Percy Williams Bridgman (21 April 1882 – 20 August 1961) was an American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. He also wrote extensively on the scientific method and on other aspects of the philosophy of science.
Known to family and friends as "Peter", Bridgman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in nearby Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Bridgman's parents were both born in New England. His father, Raymond Landon Bridgman, was "profoundly religious and idealistic" and worked as a newspaper reporter assigned to state politics. His mother, Mary Ann Maria Williams, was described as "more conventional, sprightly, and competitive".
Bridgman attended both elementary and high school in Auburndale, where he excelled at competitions in the classroom, on the playground, and while playing chess. Described as both shy and proud, his home life consisted of family music, card games, and domestic and garden chores. The family was deeply religious; reading the Bible each morning and attending a Congregational Church.
Bridgman entered Harvard University in 1900, and studied physics through to his Ph.D. From 1910 until his retirement, he taught at Harvard, becoming a full professor in 1919. In 1905, he began investigating the properties of matter under high pressure. A machinery malfunction led him to modify his pressure apparatus; the result was a new device enabling him to create pressures eventually exceeding 100,000 kgf/cm2 (10 GPa; 100,000 atmospheres). This was a huge improvement over previous machinery, which could achieve pressures of only 3,000 kgf/cm2 (0.3 GPa). This new apparatus led to an abundance of new findings, including a study of the compressibility, electric and thermal conductivity, tensile strength and viscosity of more than 100 different compounds. Bridgman is also known for his studies of electrical conduction in metals and properties of crystals. He developed the Bridgman seal and is the eponym for Bridgman's thermodynamic equations.
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