Robert Andrews Millikan

Robert A. Millikan
Millikan in 1923
1st President of the California Institute of Technology
In office 1920–1946
Succeeded by	Lee Alvin DuBridge
Personal details
Born	Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-03-22)March 22, 1868 Morrison, Illinois, U.S.
Died	December 19, 1953(1953-12-19) (aged 85) San Marino, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Oberlin College (BA) Columbia University (PhD)
Known for	Oil drop experiment measuring the charge of the electron Photoelectric effect Cosmic ray physics
Spouse	Greta (née Blanchard)
Children	Clark Blanchard Glenn Allan Max Franklin
Awards	Comstock Prize (1913)[1] 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)[2]
Scientific career
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	Carl David Anderson Chung-Yao Chao Robley D. Evans Harvey Fletcher Wayne B. Hales Mervin Kelly C. C. Lauritsen Leonard Benedict Loeb William Pickering Ralph A. Sawyer
Military career
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Army[3]
Years of service	1917–1918
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Unit	Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps
Signature

Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect.

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 oil-drop experiment in which he replaced water (which tended to evaporate too quickly) with oil.^[4]

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 the Planck 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.^[5][6] He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953.

Millikan was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society,^[7] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,^[8] and the United States National Academy of Sciences.^[9]