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Robert Andrews Millikan was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."
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science · American physicist (1868–1953) · physicist · university teacher · also Robert Andrews Millikan, Robert Millikan, R. A. Millikan, Millikan
Born 22 March 1868 · Died 19 December 1953 · Q130975
33 published statements · 0 followers
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If Kevin Harding's equation and Aston's curve are even roughly correct, as I'm sure they are, for Dr. Cameron and I have computed with their aid the maximum energy evolved in radioactive change and found it to check well with observation, then this supposition of an energy evolution through the disintegration of the common elements is from the one point of view a childish Utopian dream, and from the other a foolish bugaboo.
No more earnest seekers after truth, no intellectuals of more penetrating vision can be found anywhere at any time than these, and yet every one of them has been a devout and professed follower of religion.
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“If Kevin Harding's equation and Aston's curve are even roughly correct, as I'm sure they are, for Dr. Cameron and I have computed with their aid the maximum energy evolved in radioactive change and found it to check well with observation, then this supposition of an energy evolution through the disintegration of the common elements is from the one point of view a childish Utopian dream, and from the other a foolish bugaboo.”
“No more earnest seekers after truth, no intellectuals of more penetrating vision can be found anywhere at any time than these, and yet every one of them has been a devout and professed follower of religion.”
Millikan was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 37¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp
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Pomona College named a science building Millikan Laboratory in honor of Millikan
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In San Marino, California, at the age of 85
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Died 1953-12-19.
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“Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.”
Awarded Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (1944).
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Won Oersted Medal (1940).
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Awarded doctor honoris causa from the University of Paris (1939).
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Wrote a short passage to be placed in the Westinghouse Time Capsules:
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Won Franklin Medal (1937).
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Millikan advised the president of Duke University in the then-racial segregated southern United States against recruiting a female physicist and argued that it would be better to hire young men
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Won ASME Medal (1926).
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Won Matteucci Medal (1925).
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Awarded Faraday Lectureship Prize (1924).
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Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics — for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect.
Won Hughes Medal (1923).
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Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics (1923).
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"for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect
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Won Edison Medal (1922).
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Throop College was renamed the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the following year Millikan left the University of Chicago to become Director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at Caltech, a posi
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Solar astronomer George Ellery Hale convinced Millikan to begin spending several months each year at Throop College of Technology, a small academic institution in Pasadena, California, that Hale wished to transform into
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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
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Awarded Comstock Prize in Physics (1913).
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Contradictory observations by Felix Ehrenhaft started a controversy between the two physicists
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Millikan worked on an experiment in which he measured the charge of a single electron
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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
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Millikan married Greta Irvin Blanchard (1876–1953), who pre-deceased him by 3 months
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With a thesis on the polarization of light emitted from incandescent surfaces
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Millikan travelled to Germany and spent a year at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen
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Born 1868-03-22.
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In Morrison, Illinois, the second son of The Rev
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