Bardeen, John (1908-1991), an American physicist, became the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice in the same field. With Walter Brattain and William Shockley, he received the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in physics with Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for their theory of superconductivity. Superconductivity is the ability of some substances to conduct electrical current without resistance at extremely low temperatures. See Superconductivity . Bardeen was born on May 23, 1908, in Madison, Wisconsin, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin and Princeton University. He did his work on transistors at Bell Telephone Laboratories and his later work at the University of Illinois. He died on Jan. 30, 1991.
