Millikan, Robert Andrews
The American Robert Andrews Millikan (1868 - 1953), son to a vicar, was an experimental physicist.
He and his graduate student, Harvey Fletcher, used the oil drop experiment to measure the charge of the electron by measuring the force on tiny charged droplets of oil suspended against gravity between two metal electrodes. The results could be explained as integer multiples of a common value e ≈ 1.592·10-19 C.
See also
Last modified:10 January 2026 2.23 p.m.