Millikan atomic theory
In 1914 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1915 to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1916 to the presidency of the American Physical Society, an office which he held for two years. In 1913 he became a consultant to the research department of Western Electric, primarily to advise the company on vacuum tube problems. In the face of all the evidence for the wave nature of light, he was convinced, as were most other physicists of the day, that the equation had to be based on a false, albeit evidently quite fruitful, hypothesis.īy 1916, when Millikan completed his major work on the photoeffect, he had already assumed more than a mere professor's role in the world of science. Despite the conclusiveness of these results, Millikan did not believe that he had confirmed Einstein's theory of light quanta but only his equation for the photoeffect. By 1915, as the result of these meticulous investigations, he had confirmed the validity of Einstein's equation in every detail. Aware of Einstein's interpretation of it, about 1912 Millikan began an intensive experimental study of the phenomenon. Off and on all the while, Millikan had also explored the photoelectric effect. 009 x 10-1 11 e.s.u., which would serve the world of science for a generation. In 1913 he published the value for the electronic charge, 4.774 +. As early as 1909 Millikan was deeply involved in attempts to measure the electronic charge, providing the most persuasive evidence yet that electrons were fundamental particles of identical charge and mass. By 1910 he was a professor, a post he held until 1921. In 1896, Millikan returned to the University of Chicago and began teaching. He heard Poincaré lecture at Paris, took a course from Planck at Berlin, and did research with Nernst at Göttingen. in from Columbia in 1895, Millikan went to Europe for postgraduate study, financed by a loan from Pupin.
He was impressed by the lectures of Michael Pupin, who emphasized the importance of mathematical techniques, and by the experimental deftness of Michelson, under whom he studied at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1894.
for this achievement in 1893, Millikan entered Columbia University on a fellowship as the sole graduate student in physics. Millikan graduated from Oberlin in 1891 and continued to teach physics to the preparatory students while successfully pursuing a course of self-instruction in Silvanus P. It was Millikan’s introduction to the subject that would become his career. Mainly because he did quite well in Greek, at the end of his sophomore year he was asked to teach an introductory physics class. In 1886 he enrolled in the preparatory department of Oberlin College and, in 1887, in the classical course of the college itself. Raised in Maquoketa, Iowa, where his family moved in 1875, young Millikan enjoyed a storybook Midwestern American boyhood of fishing and farming, learning next to nothing about science.
Robert Andrews Millikan was born in Morrison, Illinois, on 22 March 1868. 6 Professional Writings and Recognitions.
5 California Institute of Technology Years.