In 1910 Robert Millikan of the University of Chicago announced that he and Harvey Fletcher had developed a successful means of isolating and measuring the charge of an electron. This exciting breakthrough, which became known as the oil-drop experiment, was a major contribution to physics. Millikan received worldwide recognition for the experiment, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923. He published a great deal regarding the implications of the measurements and ultimately became one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century.
Fletcher enjoyed a distinguished career in the field of communication acoustics, but his contribution to the oil-drop experiment was largely forgotten. His version of the story remained untold until 1982, when after his death Physics Today published an excerpt from his unpublished 1967 autobiography 1 detailing his involvement with Millikan on the famous experiment (see Physics Today, June 1982, page 43). While it offered...
