New Immortal

Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, native American of Anglo-Saxon stock, was awarded the 1923 Nobel prize for physics. This is the fourth time that a Nobel award has been made to an American scientist.* The fact that 66 men and women in all have received Nobel decorations in physics, chemistry and medicine in the 23 years since they were inaugurated, gives America no particular license to crow. As Dr. Millikan himself has said, "We have not produced one-half as many--I think I may say one-fifth as many--out-standing scientific men in proportion to our population as have Holland, England, Germany or France."

Dr. Millikan is director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics, Pasadena, Calif., and executive head of the California Institute of Technology, which is mainly a research center. Until 1921 his scientific career was spent at the University of Chicago, where he rose through all the ranks from assistant to professor and co-worker with Michelson in the department of physics. Born in Illinois, 1868, he was educated at Oberlin, Columbia, Berlin, Goettingen. He is well known abroad, has already received many prizes, including the Edison medal, for his work with electrons and ions, is the author of several standard works, particularly The Electron (University of Chicago Press, 1918).

His most important accomplishments :

1) The isolation of individual ions and direct study of their properties by means of electrical experiments with gases and drops of oil. "Ions" (Greek for "traveler") are not, as might be supposed, separate entities or still smaller components of the atom, like electrons. They are simply atoms themselves, or groups of atoms, from which one or more of the normal number of electrons has become detached by electricity or heat, upsetting their equilibrium and causing them to flow rapidly in any direction where they may find particles with the opposite electrical charge.

2) Invention of a successful mechanism for counting and measuring electrons.

3) Development of the theory that radio-activity is a property of all matter, and not simply of the 35 elements now called radioactive. Practically all substances, in varying degree, are throwing off particles and undergoing gradual transformation into other substances, he believes. But, as with uranium this may be a process of five billion years, the changes are imperceptible. At Kelly Field, Tex., Dr. Millikan sent up kites, sometimes as high as ten miles, with automatic machines attached which detected rays more powerful even than the X-rays or the "gamma" rays of radium. These rays did not come from the sun, because they were active night and day. Apparently they came from space, and may be the exciting cause of all radioactivity.

Dr. Millikan is interested, as a world citizen, in more than the shoptalk of his trade. He is an influential member of the National Research Council and of various civic bodies. Recently he was instrumental in preparing a proclamation (TIME, June 4) signed by some 40 distinguished clergymen and scientists, that there is no incompatibility between essential religion and science. An article by him in a similar vein (A Scientist Confesses His Faith) appeared in the Christian Century for June 21, 1923.

* The others were Albert A. Michelson, physics, 1907 (Dr. Michelson is a Polish Jew by race, born in Germany, but a graduate of Annapolis and an American citizen) : Alexis Carrel, medicine, 1912. born in France; Theodore W. Richards, chemistry, 1914, native American.