John Bardeen is known for seminal development of solid-state theory, resulting in the invention, with Walter H. Brattain and William B. Shockley, of the transistor; and, with Leon N. Cooper and John R. Schrieffer, for development of a consistent theory of superconductivity; both of which resulted in shared Nobel Prizes in physics.

Biography

John Bardeen was born in Madison, WI, May 23, 1908, where his father, Charles, was Dean of the newly formed Medical School of the University of Wisconsin.  His mother, Althea, was active in the art world.  John was a precocious student—he graduated from high school at 15 and could have graduated earlier, had not his family been disrupted by his mother’s untimely death-- and he earned his B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees at Wisconsin in 1928 and 1929; by that time he had also spent a period working at the Hawthorne Works of Western Electric in Chicago. At college, he was influenced by a number of his professors, notably John H. Van Vleck and Warren Weaver, and by a number of visiting professors including Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg.  His working career began at the Gulf Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh— the research arm of Gulf Oil Company--, but he shortly determined to continue his schooling, entering Princeton in 1933.  His Princeton mentor was Eugene Wigner, who would later play a crucial role in the development of the atomic bomb.  With his thesis nearly complete – finishing it was once again delayed by a family emergency, the death of his father in 1935--, Bardeen went to Harvard as a Junior Fellow, completing the thesis in 1936.  Before leaving Princeton he met and married Jane Maxwell.  In 1938 he went to the University of Minnesota as an assistant professor of physics.  His service at Minnesota was cut short by WWII, and he worked at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington DC for the duration.  In 1945, after receiving an unsatisfactory offer to return to the University of Minnesota, he went to Bell Labs where his work in solid state (begun at Harvard in the late ‘30’s) led to the announcement of the (point-contact) transistor on Dec. 23, 1947.

In 1951 Bardeen left Bell Labs for the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where he was an active faculty member until 1975; during that time he worked with Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer to develop the BCS theory of superconductivity, which won him his second (shared) Nobel Prize in physics.  He was known as an unassuming individual, with many friends, and a strong mentor for his PhD students—the first of whom, Nick Holonyak Jr., invented the light-emitting diode.

Dr. Bardeen’s publications are too numerous to list here.  His collected papers are in the hands of the University of Illinois; there are four boxes devoted to his papers, dated between 1930 and 1991, in a collection occupying 41 cubic feet (!).  Obviously, the seminal ones relate to the publication of the transistor research, originally published in the Bell System Technical Journal in 1948, and to the BCS theory, which initially appeared in physics journals.  In addition to his Nobel prizes, he was also a recipient of an enormous number of other honors, including many honorary degrees, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1971, and the Lomonosov Award of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1987.  He was active in professional circles as well: A member of the National Academy of Science, beginning in 1954; several officerships, including the presidency of the American Physical Society (1988-89); he served on President Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee from 1959-1962 and later on the Presidential Patent Committee.

John Bardeen died of cardiac arrest in Boston on January 30, 1991 at age 83.