14 Facts About Francis Bitter

Bitter invented the Bitter plate used in resistive magnets.

Francis Bitter developed the water cooling method inherent to the design of Bitter magnets.

Francis Bitter entered the University of Chicago in 1919, but chose to leave his studies there in 1922 to visit Europe.

Francis Bitter later transferred to Columbia University and graduated in 1925.

Francis Bitter continued his studies in Berlin from 1925 to 1926 and received a PhD at Columbia in 1928.

Under a National Research Council fellowship, Francis Bitter studied gases at Caltech with Robert Andrews Millikan, from 1928 to 1930.

Francis Bitter had been a moderately successful singer working under the stage name Ratan Devi.

In 1930, Francis Bitter went to work for Westinghouse, where he worked on various theoretical and applied problems concerning ferromagnetism.

Francis Bitter joined the Department of Mining and Metallurgy as an associate professor in 1934.

Francis Bitter established a magnet laboratory in 1938, where he built a solenoid magnet that produced a constant field of 100,000 gauss.

Francis Bitter did work in the first characterization of the Zeeman effect with George Harrison.

Francis Bitter often traveled to England to find ways to demagnetize British ships to protect them from a new type of German mine, which used a compass needle to trigger detonation.

Francis Bitter became a full professor in 1951, and from 1956 to 1960, he served as associate dean of MIT's school of science.

From 1962 to 1965, Francis Bitter was the housemaster of Ashdown House, MIT's graduate dormitory.