Bergen Davis

Bergen Davis ( * March 31, 1869 at White House (New Jersey), † 30 June 1958 ) was an American physicist.

Davis was the son of a farmer, studied physics at Rutgers University ( Bachelor's degree 1896) and Columbia University with a master's degree in 1900 and his doctorate in 1901 (through noise measurements in organ pipes ). Subsequently he was a John Tyndall Fellow two years in Europe, among others, JJ Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory and Eduard Riecke in Göttingen. After his return in 1903 he became tutor and instructor in 1907 at Columbia University. In 1913 he became Associate Professor and in 1919 he received a full professorship. In 1939 he retired after he had a serious heart surgery in 1938.

He dealt with the physics of gas discharges and X-rays, for example in improving double reflection X-ray spectrometers. In World War I he built in New York harbor on a X-ray machine to detect the smuggling of counter- gangs in cotton cargoes on ships to Germany. Also in the medical use of X-rays, he was active as a consultant to the Crocker Institute of Cancer Research at Columbia University. Under electricians his study of corona discharge ( 1914) was known.

At Columbia University, he led out early (1915 ) Experiments on the Bohr model of the atom, as he was one of the sources of interference in the Franck-Hertz experiment with Goucher ( a photoelectric effect at the electrodes caused by the radiation from excited by inelastic collisions of the electrons atoms).

He was Vice President of the Physics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and from 1929 a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Davis was two honorary doctorates (Columbia University, Rutgers University). 1923 to 1926 he was a member of the Physics Department of the National Research Council. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

One argument advanced by him in 1929 at the National Academy of Science thesis on the so-called Davis Barnes effect, the observation of discrete energy levels in the interaction of alpha particles with electrons, later proved observational errors out ( a perceptual error in the counting of scintillations ).