Dr. John Bardeen

One of the most beloved men at the University Of Illinois Physics Department was Noble Prize Laureate John Bardeen. The graduate students fondly called him either smiling Jack or silent John (both are apt, he almost always smiled and was thoughtful and quiet). In one of the seminar courses I took Professor Bardeen attended regularly. After any presentation he had amazing questions and comments on the science. The following are stories about Dr. John Bardeen, the first is department mythology and the second is one of my lecture encounters with smiling Jack. He had won two Noble Prizes, the first for the invention of the transistor (with two others) and the second in superconductivity (also with two others).

In 1972 Prof. Bardeen was awarded his second Noble Prize. After that announcement the department decided to throw him a party at Loomis Labs (the main physics building on campus). The party was set for 3:00 pm.. Well 3 pm came and went and the Professor failed to show up. Everyone thought this to be odd as he was usually prompt. Finally after about 20 minutes his friends were getting worried. Dr. Shriver volunteered to call his house to see if anything was amiss. He ran up to his office to place the call. After five minutes Dr. Shriver could be heard laughing uproariously. When he got back to the gathering he told about his call.

It turns out that Dr. Bardeen had got himself ready for the party and was going to leave his house at a half hour before 3 pm. He went to his garage, pressed the button to open the door and nothing happened. His transistorized garage door opener failed him. He was too embarrassed to call the lab to get a pick up. He was trying to fix the door opener when Dr. Shriver called.

The second story involves his visit to China as part of Richard Nixon’s normalization of relations with that country. When he got back the physics department asked him to give a lecture on his trip to China and his views of the state of science in Communist China.

Posters of the lecture were posted all over the engineering campus at Illinois. On the day of the lecture Dr. Shriver came down to the graduate offices (actually zoo’s with 10-12 of us to a room) and he indicated that we were to attend the lecture. Well, duh. We were all rather excited about the event. But even weirder he asked us to sit in the back and watch the front left of the lecture hall (stadium style seating). And off he went. I went to the lecture with 4 of my friends and being obedient we sat in the last row. The lecture started and finished with a slide show. We saw pictures of Jack with the President, Jack at the airport in Beijing, the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, his hosts, etc. I was happy watching the lecture and forgot to look at the front left. About two-thirds of the way through the lecture one of my friends jabbed me in the ribs and pointed to the front left. Sitting there were a couple of engineering professors and they were clearly agitated.

When the lecture was over and before Dr. Shriver had a chance to thank Dr. Bardeen a red faced engineering professor shot up and started to sputter. “Professor Bardeen, this was supposed to be a lecture on the state of science in Communist China and all you give us is a damned travel log.” Frankly, I thought he was going to pop a vein. With his usual smile Prof. Bardeen addressed the gentleman, “ I thought it was perfectly clear, there is no science in Red China” The lecture hall erupted with laughter as half a dozen angry men stormed out of the lecture hall. And yet again silent John was our hero. By the way, it was clear to me that Dr. Bardeen believed there was no science in China at that time.