Professor Percy Williams Bridgman, c mid-20th century

Percy Williams Bridgman, born 21 April 1882 in Cambridge, MA., USA, died 20 August 1961. Bridgman was an American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1946 for his work on high pressures. The Bridgman effect, the Bridgman-Stockbarger technique and the mineral bridgmanite are named after him. In 1900, Bridgman began studying at Harvard University, and studied through to his PhD in Physics. From 1910, until he retired, he worked at Harvard. From 1905, he began work on high pressures, which eventually would lead to his Nobel Prize. Bridgman married Olive Ware in 1912, they had two children. Bridgman was a member of the American Physical Society, and its president in 1942. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a student of Bridgman's. Bridgman died from suicide by gunshot in 1961, aged 79, after he had been suffering from cancer. He left in his suicide note that it was not "decent for society" to force his hand to commit suicide rather than suffer from cancer, a point that is often brought up in the assisted suicide debate. Bridgman received many honours in his life, including the Rumford Prize (1919), the Comstock Prize (1933), and the Bingham Medal (1951).