Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961)

Awarded the Prize “for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics.”

American physicist. Bridgman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 21, 1882. He was educated at Harvard where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1908, serving as Professor of Physics from 1919 to 1926, professor of mathematics natural philosophy from 1926 to 1950, as Huggins Professor from 1950 to 1954. He was a member of the American Physical Society (President, 1942), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences. Bridgman died on August 20, 1961 in New Hampshire.