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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Pages 8-27
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From page 8... ...
The Bardeen heritage had been built on hard work and high expectations. The American roots of the family trace back to Plymouth Colony, where a young Englishman named William Barden immigrated in 1638, probably from Yorkshire.
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From page 9... ...
There were almost as many programs and agendas for doing so as there were people who considered themseives progressives. Activists formed countless national, state, and local organizations devoted to bringing about change of one kind or another: the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Federation of Labor, the National Child Labor Committee, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the National Conservation
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From page 10... ...
In 1903 with the support of La Follette, Van Hise became president of the University of Wisconsin. It was Van Hise who brought John Bardeen's father, Charles Russell Bardeen, to the University of Wisconsin.
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From page 11... ...
His reputation for scholarship in education brought invitations for membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geographical Society, and the American Social Science Association. In later years, the CharIeses, father and son, frequently exchanged letters in which they discussed values and philosophical issues about education, work, or life in general.
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From page 12... ...
By the time Charles entered the Teichmann School, he had passed Harvard's examinations in Latin, advanced Greek, and geometry, and he expected, while in Leipzig, to finish studies for additional requirements. As a teenager, he described himself as "a fair scholar, being able to reason better than memorize, and I have a slight mechanical bend Psicl." He also prided himself on his athletic ability.
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From page 13... ...
Althea had been supporting herself by teaching home economics at the progressive experimental school established by John Dewey, who the historian Scott Montgomery described as "among the greatest reformers of sensibility in American history." Two teachers, Katherine Mayhew and Anna Edwards, later published a history of this Laboratory School of the University of Chicago. The school's purpose, they wrote, was "to work out with children an educational experience more creative than that provided by even the best of the current systems." Dewey's Laboratory School recruited faculty from the University of Chicago, including Dewey himself, who at that time served as head of the departments of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy.
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From page 14... ...
By educating children to work cooperatively on solving problems by the scientific method, he hoped to create a generation of adults ready to collaborate in applying such principles to social problems. According to the school's literature, "the essence of its philosophy of social welfare was its development of social individuals who could carry on intelligent social action." Althea encouraged her students to define their own problems and to seek creative answers.
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From page 15... ...
Another year and she would have made a great financial success. " According to one Bardeen family story, Althea and Charles met in the context of her decorating business.
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From page 16... ...
Paul Clark later wrote in his history of the Wisconsin Medical School that Charles "may have been boiling inside, but outwardly he remained calm, marshalling his facts and gathering advocates for his cause." He was not generally regarded as a good teacher. Most of his students relied on the teaching assistants and had little contact with Charles until examination time.
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In May 1907 the family moved into a small house set idyllically on Mendota Court, a few doors down from Lake Mendota.
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Charles wrote his father that John was "far less of a care" than his brother William had been. "Charles' devotion to John is most touching to see," Althea wrote.
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One day the Bardeen boys were helping neighborhood friends annoy the workmen who were laying concrete sidewalks in the Mendota Court neighborhood. Charles appeared and sternly reprimanded the mischievous youngsters.
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From page 20... ...
After school and on weekends, he found playmates of his own age among the neighborhood children. One of his earlier friends recalled happy times collecting stamps, drawing a map of Lake Mendota, and playing evening games of Run, Sheep, Run and Sardines.
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From page 21... ...
John Bardeen and his friend John Hames won first place in a Boy Scout semaphore-signaling contest. The two boys were so proficient they were asked to give a demonstration to the Future Farmers of America in Madison.
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In a letter thanking him for the furs he had sent for her birthday, Althea wrote, "I have wanted them for years, in fact as long
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From page 23... ...
Charles contributed monthly to the American Society for the Relief of French War Orphans, providing a model of social conscience that John would emulate in his adult life. His emerging sense of economy showed up early on.
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From page 24... ...
By the summer of 1910 Charles had developed the habit of playing a round of golf "nearly every afternoon." It was for him a time to relax into his thoughts sometimes with humorous results. A family story features Charles driving home from the golf course and stopping by a favorite drugstore to buy tobacco supplies.
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From page 25... ...
Charles pulled as many strings as he could in the medical community, but the discussions of his wife's condition with colleagues only underscored the fact that, as yet, medicine could offer little in the way of treatment to cancer patients. The best medical expertise of the time amounted to little more than bold incisions to remove surface and breast cancers and the cautious use of X rays in treatment.
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From page 26... ...
On April 10, 1920, Althea came home from Chicago, where she had been undergoing radiation therapy. She wanted to be home on Mendota Court, with her family.
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From page 27... ...
A year earlier, on his forty-eighth birthday, he wrote to his father that he had "put in twelve or fifteen hours" to finish a paper on "the proportions of the body to height and weight during growth. " CharIes's sister Bertha came to help with the children and household in the days immediately following Althea's death.
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