Percy Williams Bridgman

Percy Williams Bridgman
Born	21 April 1882(1882-04-21) Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Died	20 August 1961(1961-08-20) (aged 79) Randolph, New Hampshire, USA Suicide
Nationality	United States
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Harvard University
Alma mater	Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Wallace Clement Sabine
Doctoral students	John C. Slater John Hasbrouck Van Vleck
Known for	High Pressure Physics
Notable awards	Rumford Prize (1917) Elliott Cresson Medal (1932) Nobel Prize in Physics (1946)

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.

Biography

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.

Bridgman made many improvements to his high pressure apparatus over the years, and unsuccessfully attempted the synthesis of diamond many times.^[1]

His writings on the philosophy of science advocated operationalism, and he coined the term operational definition. He was also one of the 11 signatories to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

Death

Bridgman committed suicide by gunshot after living with metastatic cancer for some time. His suicide note read in part, "It isn't decent for society to make a man do this thing himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself."^[2] Bridgman's words have been quoted by many on both sides of the assisted suicide debate.^[3][4]

Honors and awards

Bridgman received Doctors, honoris causa from Stevens Institute (1934), Harvard (1939), Brooklyn Polytechnic (1941), Princeton (1950), Paris (1950), and Yale (1951). He received the Bingham Medal (1951) from the Society of Rheology, the Rumford Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Elliott Cresson Medal from the Franklin Institute, the Gold Medal from Bakhuys Roozeboom Fund (founder Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom) (1933) from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,^[5] and the Comstock Prize (1933) of the National Academy of Sciences.^[6] He was a member of the American Physical Society and was its President in 1942. He was also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and Honorary Fellow of the Physical Society of London.

The Percy W. Bridgman House, in Massachusetts, is a U.S. National Historic Landmark designated in 1975.^[7]

Bibliography

• 1914. A Complete Collection of Thermodynamic Formulas (abstract). Phys. Rev. 3 (4): 273–281. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.3.273. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v3/i4/p273_1.
• 1922. Dimensional Analysis. Yale University Press
• 1925. A Condensed Collection of Thermodynamics Formulas. Harvard University Press
• 1927. The Logic of Modern Physics. Beaufort Books. Online excerpt.
• 1934. Thermodynamics of Electrical Phenomena in Metals and a Condensed Collection of Thermodynamic Formulas. MacMillan.
• 1936. The Nature of Physical Theory. John Wiley & Sons.
• 1938. The Intelligent Individual and Society. MacMillan.
• 1941. The Nature of Thermodynamics. Harper & Row, Publishers.
• 1952. The Physics of High Pressure. G. Bell.
• 1956. "Probability, Logic and ESP", Science, vol. 123, p. 16, January 6, 1956.
• 1959. The Way Things Are. Harvard Univ. Press.
• 1962. A Sophisticate's Primer of Relativity. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• 1964. Collected experimental papers. Harvard University Press.
• 1980. Reflections of a Physicist. Arno Press; ISBN 040512595X

See also

• Percy W. Bridgman House
• Pascalization, also called bridgmanization

References

1. ^ Hazen, Robert (1999), The Diamond Makers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521654742 
2. ^ Nuland, Sherwin. How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter. Vintage Press, 1995. ISBN 0679742441.
3. ^ Ayn Rand Institute discussion on assisted suicide
4. ^ Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization
5. ^ "Bakhuys Roozeboom Fund laureates". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.knaw.nl/Pages/DEF/27/600.bGFuZz1FTkc.html. Retrieved 13 January 2011. 
6. ^ "Comstock Prize in Physics". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_comstock. Retrieved 13 February 2011. 
7. ^ James Sheire (February, 1975) (PDF), National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Percy Bridgman House / Bridgman House-Buckingham School, National Park Service, http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/75000298.pdf, retrieved 2009-06-22  and Accompanying one photo, exterior, from 1975PDF (519 KB)

Further reading

• Walter, Maila L., 1991. Science and Cultural Crisis: An Intellectual Biography of Percy Williams Bridgman (1882–1961). Stanford Univ. Press.
• McMillan, Paul F (2005), "Pressing on: the legacy of Percy W. Bridgman.", Nature materials 4 (10): 715–8, 2005 Oct, Bibcode 2005NatMa...4..715M, doi:10.1038/nmat1488, PMID 16195758 

External links

• Bridgman's Nobel Prize website

Academic offices
Preceded by Theodore Lyman	Hollis Chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy 1926-1950	Succeeded by John Hasbrouck Van Vleck

Persondata
Name	Bridgman, Percy Williams
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	21 April 1882
Place of birth	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Date of death	20 August 1961
Place of death	Randolph, New Hampshire, USA