Essay Database

In 1909 Robert Andrew Millikan set up an apparatus to measure the charge of an electron within an accuracy range of 3%. In 1913 he came out with a value of the electrical charge that would serve the world of science for a generation.         Young Millikan had a childhood like most others: he had no idea what his profession would be. Once he recalled trying to jump from a rowboat to a dock, falling in the water, and …

…thick cylinders and rigged up an electro-magnetically controlled knife to shave off the ends of the blocks.         Millikan went on to the Physics Laboratory at California Institute of Technology, where he obtained his Doctorate and stayed on doing research on Cosmic Rays until he retired in 1945. It was while he was at Cal Tech in 1923 that he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Millikan was the first Cal Tech Doctorate to achieve a Nobel Prize.