1868-1953
Physicist

Nobel Prize Winner.

Robert Millikan won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1923 for his work on the charge of the electron and the photoelectric effect, work essentially completed by 1917. During the 1920s he devoted his attention to radioactivity from outer space, naming and investigating the phenomenon of cosmic rays.

Early Life.

Robert Millikan was born in Morrison, Illinois, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1921. He received his doctorate in physics from Columbia University in New York City in 1895. After further study at Gottingen and Berlin, Germany, he taught and did research at the University of Chicago until 1921, when he accepted a post at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he remained until his retirement in 1945.

The Electronic Charge.

In 1906 Millikan began the work that led to his determination of the precise value of e — the charge of the electron. By 1909 he...