thesis_year death_date death_place module birth_place religion nationality name field birth_date thesis_url spouse signature image article_title academic_advisors birth_name thesis_title
1895 19 december 1953 san marino , california , u.s. yes 1918 rank = 24px lieutenant colonel unit = aviation section allegiance , u.s. signal corps = branch = serviceyears = 1917 -- morrison , illinois , u.s. congregationalist united states robert a. millikan physics 22 march 1868 http://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/1883118 greta née blanchard robert andrews milliken signature.svg robert andrews millikan 1920s.jpg robert andrews millikan
 mihajlo pupin robert andrews millikan on of incandescent solids and liquids . the polarization of light emitted from the surfaces
robert andrews millikan

robert a. millikan -lrb- march 22 , 1868 -- december 19 , 1953 -rrb- was an american experimental physicist honored with the nobel prize for physics in 1923 for his measurement of the elementary electronic charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect .
millikan graduated from oberlin college in 1891 and obtained his doctorate at columbia university in 1895 .
in 1896 he became an assistant at the university of chicago , where he became a full professor in 1910 .
in 1909 millikan began a series of experiments to determine the electric charge carried by a single electron .
he began by measuring the course of charged water droplets in an electric field .
the results suggested that the charge on the droplets is a multiple of the elementary electric charge , but the experiment was not accurate enough to be convincing .
he obtained more precise results in 1910 with his famous oil-drop experiment in which he replaced water -lrb- which tended to evaporate too quickly -rrb- with oil .
in 1914 millikan took up with similar skill the experimental verification of the equation introduced by albert einstein in 1905 to describe the photoelectric effect .
he used this same research to obtain an accurate value of planck 's constant .
in 1921 millikan left the university of chicago to become director of the norman bridge laboratory of physics at the california institute of technology -lrb- caltech -rrb- in pasadena , california .
there he undertook a major study of the radiation that the physicist victor hess had detected coming from outer space .
millikan proved that this radiation is indeed of extraterrestrial origin , and he named it `` cosmic rays . ''
as chairman of the executive council of caltech -lrb- the school 's governing body at the time -rrb- from 1921 until his retirement in 1945 , millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the united states .
he also served on the board of trustees for science service , now known as society for science & the public , from 1921 to 1953 .
