Robert Andrews Millikan

Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) 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."

As Chairman of the Executive Council of Caltech (the school's governing body at the time) from 1921 to 1945, Millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the United States. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953.

Biography

Robert Andrews Millikan was born on March 22, 1868, in Morrison, Illinois, the second son of Mary Jane (née Andrews) and The Reverend Silas Franklin Millikan. He attended Maquoketa Community High School, before entering Oberlin College in 1886, where he studied Greek and mathematics. After graduating in 1891, Millikan taught physics for two years, and developed an interest in the subject. He obtained a Master of Arts in Physics from Oberlin College in 1893. In 1895, he received a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University for a thesis on the polarization of light emitted from incandescent surfaces.

At the close of my sophomore year [...] my Greek professor [...] asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the preparatory department during the next year. To my reply that I did not know any physics at all, his answer was, "Anyone who can do well in my Greek can teach physics." "All right," said I, "you will have to take the consequences, but I will try and see what I can do with it." I at once purchased an Avery's Elements of Physics, and spent the greater part of my summer vacation of 1889 at home – trying to master the subject. [...] I doubt if I have ever taught better in my life than in my first course in physics in 1889. I was so intensely interested in keeping my knowledge ahead of that of the class that they may have caught some of my own interest and enthusiasm.