Percy Williams Bridgman

Percy Williams Bridgman was an American physicist known for his research into the behavior of materials under extremely high pressure. He designed apparatus and sealing devices that reached pressures far beyond what earlier equipment could achieve, and used them to study how materials change under those conditions. He received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of this high-pressure apparatus and for the discoveries he made with it. Bridgman also wrote on the philosophy of science, introducing the idea of operational definitions in his 1927 book The Logic of Modern Physics.