True Genius The Life and Science of John Bardeen: The Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics (2002) / Chapter Skim
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16 Last Journey
16 Last Journey
Pages 301-313
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From page 301... ...
The film captures Bardeen at eighty-two, his well-wrinkled face pleasant and calm. He sits at his desk where a lighted magnifying glass had been mounted on an adjustable arm, a gift lovingly crafted by Holonyak and his students to help alleviate some of the frustration of Bardeen's failing eyesight.
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From page 302... ...
The date, Bardeen said, was December 16, 1947, one week before the group's demonstration of their invention to the Bell Labs "top brass." "But John," Holonyak pointed out, "the junction transistor is a bipolar transistor based on the bipolar injection ideas that were yours and Brattain's." He wanted to point out several items to refIect the fact that Shockley's junction transistor, more easily manufactured than the original point-contact transistor, was based on ideas that originated with Bardeen and Brattain. "So it's sort of ironic," Holonyak continued, "that the more manufacturable one for a certain time was the bipolar pen junction device of Shockley's, but nevertheless based on the injection principle that you and Brattain discovered on December 16, 1947.
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From page 303... ...
In 1981 he told a newspaper journalist that "you have to judge people individually even if there are statistical differences." Shockley, Bardeen once wrote, "could have accomplished much more in physics and electropics if his interests had not been diverted." In 1980 Shockley had publicized the fact that he was making contributions to a sperm bank, reckoning that his genetic material might ameliorate "the existence of tragic genetic deficiencies in
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From page 304... ...
Brattain Lectureship at Whitman College, "in memory of a long-time friend and colleague." Throughout 1990 Bardeen worked on preparing his scientific papers for deposit in the University of Illinois Archives. He spent many tiring hours organizing his papers with the help of Tonya Lillie, an undergraduate assistant who later helped with the early research for this book.
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From page 305... ...
Betsy Bardeen said that her father wanted scholars to be able to trace the evolution of "his scientific ideas and where the different contributions came from. " David Pines noted that Bardeen "wanted to emphasize what he'd done in science, how he went about doing it." Equally important to Bardeen was to have his life and work remembered "in a way that would inspire the young." Everything became more difficult for Bardeen as his eyesight failed.
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From page 306... ...
John and lane purchased airline tickets but had to cancel their reservation when doctors warned Bardeen not to fly. The opening in the chest wall from the pleural effusions in Urbana had not completely healed, leaving his lungs vulnerable to possible pressure changes in an airplane.
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From page 307... ...
John gently quizzed him. Sugarbaker recalled, "I was struck right away with his analytical approach to his problem, his seeking answers.
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From page 308... ...
And he died." Sugarbaker considered Bardeen to be "a man with a lot of presence." You could tell "there was a lot to this person." Thoracic surgeons often see people when "their backs are up against the wall." At that moment courage is a precious commodity. Bardeen, he felt, had remarkable grace in his final days.
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From page 309... ...
Of the three children, I must have been the one who helped Dad learn what it really meant to be a father." He explained that km had been "calm and peaceful as a baby and was content to explore the world within his reach. However, I was always the active one, always one step from disaster and one step ahead of anybody trying to catch me." km told the group that when the children were young, "he rough-housed with us on the living room floor and later spent many hours playing catch and shagging flies with Bill and me." "Most of all, my father enjoyed his grandchildren," Betsy said.
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From page 310... ...
At the memorial he described John as "quiet, genuinely modest, instead of basking in the glory which a continuing series of seminal contributions to science brought his way, he preferred always to work on the next scientific challenge. He possessed a rare ability to see into the heart of a problem, to pluck out the key phenomena from a myriad of often conflicting experimental results and to isolate the elements required to develop a coherent description.
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From page 311... ...
During the visit, John and Fred had reminisced about the extraordinary period they had lived through at the University of Illinois. Bardeen said, "Well we owe a lot to Louis Ridenour." They agreed that Ridenour, in collaboration with President George Stoddard and Provost Coleman Griffith, had been able to turn the place around, "taking advantage of the opportunities of the period." Dutch Osterhoudt wrote to lane from his wife Gretchen's room at Durango Mercy Hospital, where she had undergone surgery three days earlier.
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From page 312... ...
Bill and his wife Marge agreed to preserve important family papers in their home in Warrenville, Illinois. At the university, most of the documents in Bardeen's office were moved to the University of Illinois Archives, where they were carefully arranged, boxed, and catalogued for research use according to archival standards.
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From page 313... ...
"Every time we attend a funeral service," lane had once told her sister Betty, "we decide again that we want no such ceremony when we die." She and John agreed that the family could, if they wanted to, have a memorial service conducted by friends and family, "but not a sermon by a stranger, who, if a minister, is bound to dwell on life after death and other religious ideas in which we have no faith." lane's family and friends honored her memory with a small memorial service on April 5, 1997. Bill Bardeen designed a single low stone monument for the graves of both his parents.
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