John Bardeen *36

The following memorial was published online Aug. 13, 2012.

John Bardeen, who died Jan. 30, 1991, at age 82 and who won two Nobel Prizes in physics, was the major subject of Gregg Lange ‘70’s Rally ‘Round the Cannon column for the March 21, 2012, online edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Bardeen, who graduated from Princeton in 1936 with a Ph.D. in mathematical physics, had been at Bell Labs for six years until 1951 when he left for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he remained as a professor for 40 years. He received his first Nobel in 1956 for co-inventing the transistor in 1947, and his second in 1972 for his work on superconductivity.

Princeton awarded Bardeen an honorary doctorate in 1968, and in 1973 he was the first to receive the James Madison Medal given to a distinguished graduate school alumnus.

In celebration of the Graduate School’s centennial, the Jan. 24, 2001, PAW listed Bardeen among 100 notable graduate alumni of the 20th century. In PAW’s Jan. 23, 2008, issue delineating the 25 most influential Princeton alumni ever, Bardeen was ranked fifth, after James Madison (ranked first) and Woodrow Wilson (ranked third).

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.