Robert Millikan

Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was a U.S. experimental physicist who won the 1923 Nobel Prize for his measurement of the charge on the electron and for his work on the photoelectric effect. He later studied cosmic rays.

Education

Millikan received a Bachelor's degree in the classics from Oberlin College in 1891 and his doctorate in physics from Columbia University in 1895. He explained his transition from classics to physics in his autobiography:

Related Topics:
Bachelor's degree - Classics - Oberlin College - 1891 - Doctorate - Physics - Columbia University - 1895 - Autobiography

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: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.

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Millikan's enthusiasm for education continued throughout his career, and he was the coauthor of a popular and influential series of introductory textbooks,{{ref|texts}} which were ahead of their time in many ways. Compared to other books of the time, they treated the subject more in the way in which it was thought about by physicists. They also included many homework problems that asked conceptual questions, rather than simply requiring the student to plug numbers into a formula.

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