5605 S Woodlawn Ave
Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Robert A. Millikan House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

When a member of the National Academy of Science dies, the Academy in accordance with its procedures publishes a biographical memoir of the deceased scientist. L. A. Dubridge and Paul Epstein, two distinguished physicists, wrote the Academy's· biographical memoir of Robert Andrews Millikan. After studying Millikan's life and work, Dubridge and Epstein wrote, "Millikan was without question one of America's greatest scientists. He was, at the height of his career, not only the Nation's most renowned physicist but also a conspicuous educational leader and public citizen.

LIFE
Robert A. Millikan was born March 22, 1868, in Morrison, Illinois, the son of a minister. When Robert was five the -family moved to McGregor, Iowa, and two years later to Maquoketa, Iowa, where Millikan grew up. He attended local schools graduating from high school in 1885. Before going on to college Millikan worked for fifteen months as a court reporter and then entered Oberlin College. At Oberlin he studied both science and the humanities. By his junior year he had so impressed his teachers that he was asked to teach an introductory course in physics. After completing his undergraduate study in 1891 Millikan remained at Oberlin for graduate work earning an M.A; in 1893, By the time Millikan's years at Oberlin came to an end, physics had become his vocation.
Unknown to Millikan one of his Oberlin professors submitted his student records to Columbia University in the hope of securing a scholarship that would allow Millikan to go on for his PhD. Millikan learned of the honor when he read his name in the New York Times in the list of scholarship winners. Entering Columbia-in 1893 Millikan, who at the time was the only graduate student in physics, studied under Michael I. Pupin, the distinguished physicist. During the summer of 1894 on Pupin 's recommendation.

Millikan studied at; the university of Chicago with A. A. Michelson, America's first Nobel prize winner in physics. When Millikan received his PhD. in 1895, he could look back with pride and say that he had studied under two of the country's leading physicists. Of Michelson Millikan years later wrote, "I was such more impressed by Michelson than by anyone else I had thus far met."

Supported by funds and introductions supplied by Pupin, Millikan spent 1896 studying in Europe. Upon returning to the United States, he accepted an offer from Michelson to teach at the University of Chicago. Millikan was 29 when he joined the University of Chicago faculty and he immediately poured his young energies into his discipline. During his first decade at Chicago, he consistently worked twelve hours a day, dividing his time among teaching, writing textbooks, and research. In 1900 Chicago sent him to Paris to set up an exhibit of the instruments with which Michelson had measured the speed of light. In 1902 he again returned to Europe, this time on his honeymoon, and he used the occasion to meet most of Europe's leading physicists. In 1908 Millikan began the electron experiments which made him famous and which he later called, "my oil drop venture."

The University of Chicago remained Millikan's academic home until 1917. With the outbreak of World War, I Millikan accepted a commission as major in the United States Army Signal Corps and moved to Washington, D.C. to help organize the National Research Council. During the war in addition to his many duties with the National Research Council Millikan was especially active in assembling a group of scientists to work in submarine warfare and he also acted as director of the meteorological unit of the Army Signal Corps. At the end of the war, he remained an additional year in Washington assisting in the permanent establishment of the National Research Council and raising funds for facilities to house the organization.

With the war over and National Research Council firmly established, Millikan moved back to Chicago to resume his interrupted research. Although by 1920 Millikan had developed strong intellectual and personal ties to the University of Chicago, he decided to leave the school and move to California. Both George E. Hale, the distinguished astronomer, and Arthur A. Noyes, a leading chemist, had already- moved there and Millikan found their offer of a handsome salary and liberal research funds persuasive. Millikan's move to Throop College of Technology, soon to become the California Institute of Technology, marked a turning point in his career. He continued to perform important research in physics, but a significant portion of his time and energies were drawn into the development of the school. Between 1921 and his retirement in 1945 as chairman of the school's executive committee, in effect the position of institute president, Millikan lead the California Institute of Technology to a position of financial stability and world prominence. Retirement did not mean the end of Millikan's interest in science and he remained active until the end of his long life. He died in California on December 19, 1953, aged 85.

WORK
During the first half of the 20th century the United States became a world leader in the physical and biological sciences. Numerous scientists, both native and foreign born, contributed to the development and expansion of the American scientific community. As the community grew developing its institutions and constantly expanding research directions, an elite cadre of outstanding scientists emerged within the community·. From the beginning of this century until his death in 1953 Robert A. Millikan was a high-ranking member of the American scientific elite.

In the history of physics Millikan's fame rests in part on his series of experiments that proved the electronic character of electricity. In these series of experiments (first published in 1911) Millikan employed charged falling oil drops to establish that all charges as well as changes in charge are whole multiplies of a least value, thus confirming the atomicity of electricity. The importance of Millikan's "oil drop venture" was that it proved the existence of electrons, historically the first subatomic constituent of matter to be identified. The rapid development of physics after 1911 was based on the universally held conviction that electricity is composed of indivisible electrons.

Millikan's work involving Einstein's photoelectric effect was also of major significance in the history of physics. In 1913 Millikan developed a complex machine by means of which he tested Einstein's 1905 photoelectric effect theory. In a series of sophisticated experiments employing Einstein's photoelectric equation Millikan completely confirmed the theory. Einstein himself credited Millikan with proving, " ... conclusively the emission of electrons from solid bodies under the influence of light itself; which result of the quantum theory is especially characteristic for the corpuscular structure of radiation."3 For his work in proving that the electron is an elementary charge and also for his work on the photoelectric effect, Millikan received the 1923 Nobel Prize in physics.

During his career as a research physicist Millikan also made important contributions to understanding the viscosity of air, the extreme ultraviolet spectrum, and cosmic rays. In relation to the latter Millikan was the first to use balloons to raise electroscopes high in the atmosphere and he also placed electroscopes in deep lakes. Among the results of Millikan's cosmic ray experiments was the proof that cosmic ray intensities do not vary with the position of the sun or stars and also the proof that the intensity of cosmic rays rises with altitude to a certain height, then reaches a maximum, and then declines.

Millikan's fame as a physicist inevitably led to his being called upon to participate in public affairs. When the United States entered World War I, the National Research Council was established to mobilize the American scientific community in support of the war effort. George E. Hale, the Council's first chairman, called on Millikan to help organize the Council and recruit scientists to work for government agencies. From 1916 to 1919 Millikan lived in Washington devoting his talents to the Council and its various undertakings.

Millikan is also remembered as an outstanding educator. In 1921 George E. Hale persuaded Millikan to leave Chicago to join him at what soon became the California Institute of Technology. Although the University of Chicago resented what it regarded as a great faculty raid (and still does), Millikan went to Pasadena for the purpose of helping establish a great scientific institution. "He was determined to found an institution," his biographers write, "where teaching and research went hand in hand, where a major assignment of resources to research would be achieved, where research would provide the creative atmosphere for stimulating teaching, and where young students would keep the freshness of the research spirit alive.

Although Millikan's official administrative title was chairman of the executive council, he in fact functioned as the president of the school. Millikan was not alone in building the California Institute of Technology into one of the finest scientific schools in the country, but he more than any other individual was responsible for its success. In addition to attracting a prestigious faculty to the school he also was responsible for creating the Norman Bridge Laboratory, one of the world's most famous physics laboratories.

Millikan traveled widely and was in constant demand as a lecturer. He was elected to most of the scientific academies of the world and accumulated more honors and awards than any American scientist of his time. In the opinion of his peers Robert A. Millikan was indeed the nation's most renowned physicist and also a conspicuous educational leader and public citizen.