Millikan was a key figure in the development of physics in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. In the course of his life (he died in 1953) Millikan was a Professor of Physics, Director of the Norman Bridge Physics Laboratory and President of the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH). He was eventually to become a lecturer there (1910), a post he held until 1921. Michelson to become his assistant in the recently founded Ryerson Laboratory at the University of Chicago. After spending a year (1896) in Germany at the Universities of Berlin and Götingen, he return to the United States to take up an invitation from the physicist and fellow Nobel Laureate Albert A. In 1893 he was awarded a fellowship at Columbia University, from which he received his PhD in 1895 for a thesis on the polarization of light emitted by incandescent surfaces. A phenomenon that had originally been observed (1824) by François Aragó, Millikan used molten gold and silver from the US Department of Treasury to prove his thesis. After graduating from Oberlin College in Ohio (1891) -where he particularly enjoyed studying Greek and mathematics- he did two courses in elementary physics, which awakened his interest in this discipline. Robert Andrews Millikan was born in Morrison, Illinois (USA) on March 22, 1868. Indeed, it is considered to be one of “most beautiful experiments in physics” and was pivotal in enabling the measurement of the charge of the electron Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953). One of the most famous and important of these was that which enabled the determination of the charge of the electron, conducted by Millikan in 1909, which has become known as the oil-drop experiment or simply Millikan’s experiment. There are numerous examples of decisive experiments in the history of physics. Physics requires experiments, accurate measurement and, of course, conclusions to be drawn. There is little doubt, however, that inside the apparatus used by Millikan there was a world of particles with which he became so familiar that he unblushingly claimed to see things in that world.
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Quite often we physicists say that we see those things on which we are working, no matter how small, or even abstract they may be. “He who has seen that experiment, and hundreds of investigators have observed it, has literally seen the electron”. In his Nobel Lecture “The Electron and the Light-Quant from the Experimental Point of View” he referred to the experiment that had enabled him determine the charge of the electron, leaving his audience convinced that he had seen electrons: “for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect”. In 1923, the American physicist Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics ,