Percy Williams Bridgman Biography

Percy Williams Bridgman was an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing new techniques in the field of high-pressure physics and for his work on the effect of pressure on solids, liquids and gases. He was the designer of self-tightening joints which made it possible for scientist to carry out experiments where pressures up to 420,000 kilograms per square centimeter could be exerted with a special ‘seal’ that he had developed. Earlier scientists were able to get a maximum of only 3,000 kilograms per square centimeter of pressure during their experiments. He was the first person to enunciate the ‘theory of operationalism’ which says that all scientific concepts could be explained by a set of operations. He had a fertile imagination, intuition and a capacity for analyzing mechanical details which helped him use his dexterity in developing scientific equipment of various kinds. He was never influenced by any external means such as the demands of a society, administrative work or personal weaknesses during his experimental work throughout his career. He helped develop sound-detection systems for anti-submarine warfare during the First World War. He worked on the Manhattan Project on the compressibility of uranium and plutonium during the Second World War.