Percy Williams Bridgman (∗April 21st, 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.; †August 20th, 1961 in Randolph, New Hampshire, U.S.A.) was a physicist who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Percy Williams Bridgman (with permission of the AIP’s Emilio Segre Visual Archives)
Early Years and Education
Percy Williams Bridgman was born as the child of Raymond Landon Bridgman, a newspaper reporter, and Mary Ann Maria Williams. He attended the primary and the high school in Auburndale, one of 13 villages within the city of Newton (close to Cambridge). Since 1900 he studied physics at Harvard University.
Scientific Achievements and Professional Career
In 1905 he started his research on the influence of high pressure on materials and their thermodynamic behavior. Observing a malfunction of his pressure apparatus, he changed the design, and as a result, he could realize pressure higher than 10 GPa (up to this moment, the limit was 0.3 GPa). With this new equipment, he investigated the...
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References
Bridgman PW (1952) Studies in large plastic flow and fracture: with special emphasis on the effects of hydrostatic pressure. McGraw-Hill, New York
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Altenbach, H. (2019). Bridgman, Percy Williams. In: Altenbach, H., Öchsner, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Continuum Mechanics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53605-6_326-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53605-6_326-1
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