Wednesday, 4 December 2024

Two Red Houses

 


American physicist and electrical engineer John Bardeen was cooking breakfast for his family when the news came over the radio: John, Walter Brattain and William Schockley had just won the Nobel Prize in Physics! John was so surprised he dropped the eggs on the floor. At the ceremony in Stockholm, John introduced his youngest son to the King of Sweden. Gustav VI was distressed John’s older two boys – who were busy with exams at Harvard – hadn’t come. The physicist reassured his majesty, “I’ll bring them the next time I win a Nobel prize.” He may have meant it as a joke, but that’s not how it turned out. John Bardeen won in 1956 for the invention of the transistor. He won again in 1972, for the theory of superconductivity, making him the only person to win two Nobel prizes in physics. Don’t worry. The second time he won, John brought all three sons to the ceremony.

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