Percy Williams Bridgman

Percy Williams Bridgman (April 21, 1882 – August 20, 1961) was an American

Bridgman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in nearby Auburndale.^[5]

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".^[5]

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

Bridgman made many improvements to his high-pressure apparatus over the years, and unsuccessfully attempted the synthesis of diamond many times.^[8]

His

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, was an undergraduate student of Bridgman's. Of his teaching abilities, Oppenheimer said that, “I found Bridgman a wonderful teacher because he never really was quite reconciled to things being the way they were and he always thought them out.”^[10]

Home life and death

Bridgman married Olive Ware (1882-1972), of

Bridgman was a "penetrating analytical thinker" with a "fertile mechanical imagination" and exceptional manual dexterity. He was a skilled plumber and carpenter, known to shun the assistance of professionals in these matters. He was also fond of music and played the piano, and took pride in his flower and vegetable gardens.[5]

Bridgman committed suicide by gunshot after suffering from metastatic cancer for some time. His suicide note was a mere two sentences; "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."^[11][12] Bridgman's words have been quoted by many in the assisted suicide debate.^[13][14]

Honors and awards

Bridgman received Doctors,

Bridgman was a member of the

National Academy of Sciences. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and Honorary Fellow of the Physical Society of London.^{[citation needed}

]

The Percy W. Bridgman House, in Massachusetts, is a U.S. National Historic Landmark designated in 1975.^[17]

In 2014, the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association approved the name bridgmanite for perovskite-structured (Mg,Fe)SiO₃,^[18] the Earth's most abundant mineral,^[19] in honor of his high-pressure research.

Bibliography

• — (1922). Dimensional Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  OCLC 840631
  .
• — (1925). A Condensed Collection of Thermodynamics Formulas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  OCLC 594940689
  .
• — (1927). The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan.
  OCLC 17522325.^[20] Online excerpt.
• — (1934). The Thermodynamics of Electrical Phenomena in Metals. New York: Macmillan.
• — (1936). The Nature of Physical Theory. Dover.
  OCLC 1298653
  .
• — (1938). The Intelligent Individual and Society. New York: MacMillan.
  OCLC 1488461
  .
• — (1941). The Nature of Thermodynamics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  OCLC 4614803
  .
• — (1949). The Physics of High Pressure. London: G. Bell.
  OCLC 8122603
  .
• — (1950). Reflections of a Physicist. New York: Philosophical Library.
  OCLC 583047.^[21]
• — (1952). Studies in large plastic flow and fracture: with special emphasis on the effects of hydrostatic pressure. Metallurgy and metallurgical engineering series. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  OCLC 7435297
  .
• — (1959). The Way Things Are. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  OCLC 40803473
  .
• — (1961) [First published separately in 1925 and 1934]. Thermodynamics of Electrical Phenomena in Metals and a Condensed Collection of Thermodynamic Formulas. New Haven: Macmillan.
  OCLC 610252150
  .
• — (1962). A Sophisticate's Primer of Relativity. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press.
  OCLC 530615
  .
• — (1964). Collected experimental papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  OCLC 372237
  .

See also

• Bridgmanite, the most abundant mineral in Earth's mantle, named after Bridgman
• Bridgman's black
• Pascalization, also called bridgmanization
• Percy W. Bridgman House
• Phases of ice, discovery of high pressure forms of water was published by P.W. Bridgman in 1912

References

1. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1962.0003
   .
2. doi:10.1063/1.3057180
   .
3. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.3.273
   .
4. PMID 13281470
   .
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} Kemble, Edwin C.; Birch, Francis (1970). Percy Williams Bridgman – 1882—1961 (PDF). National Academy of Sciences. pp. 25, 26, 27.
6. ISBN 9780385504133
   . In many ways they were opposites; Kemble, the theorist, was a devout Christian, while Bridgman, the experimentalist, was a strident atheist.
7. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1946".
8. ISBN 0-521-65474-2
9. ^ Neurath, Otto (1938). "Unified Science as Encyclopedic Integration". International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. 1 (1): 1–27.
10. OCLC 695567255
    .
11. doi:10.1080/00963402.1962.11454315
    . Retrieved October 20, 2021.
12. ISBN 0-679-74244-1
    .
13. ^ Ayn Rand Institute discussion on assisted suicide. Aynrand.org; retrieved January 28, 2012.
14. ^ Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization. Assistedsuicide.org (June 13, 2003); retrieved 2012-01-28.
15. ^ "Bakhuys Roozeboom Fund laureates". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on August 7, 2011. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
16. ^ "Comstock Prize in Physics". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on December 29, 2010. Retrieved February 13, 2011.
17. ^ James Sheire (February 1975), National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Percy Bridgman House/Bridgman House-Buckingham School (PDF), National Park Service, retrieved June 22, 2009 and Accompanying one photo, exterior, from 1975 (519 KB)
18. ^ Page on bridgmanite, mindat.org; retrieved June 3, 2014.
19. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2007.01.011
    .
20. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1929-04767-0
    .
21. Bibcode:1950PA.....58..367R
    .

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, vol. 4, no. 10 (published October 2005), pp. 715–718,
  S2CID 2785280

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Percy Bridgman.

• Percy Williams Bridgman on Nobelprize.org
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
• Percy Williams Bridgman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Percy Williams Bridgman at PhilPapers.

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