Herbert S. Bridge papers

Bridge obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland in 1941. During the war, he was a member of the staff of the National Defense Research Council Separation Project at Princeton and then a member of the staff of the Los Alamos Laboratories.

In 1946 he came to MIT, where he received his PhD in 1950. From 1950 until 1966 he was a member of the research staff of MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science. During 1957, he took a leave of absence from MIT to work at the CERN Laboratory at Geneva, Switzerland. He did work on high-energy particles at CERN and at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He was appointed professor of physics at MIT in 1966. His early work in cosmic rays was mainly directed toward the study of nuclear interactions produced by cosmic ray particles and of the new unstable particles resulting from these interactions.

Bridge was associate director of the MIT Center for Space Research from its inception in 1965 until 1978. He was appointed director in 1978 and served until 1984, when he retired and became professor emeritus. He also contributed to MIT's educational program through formal teaching and the training that graduate students and young PhDs received under his leadership. Bridge was a member of the American Geophysical Society, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He was awarded the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1974.

MIT News Office, H.S. Bridge, Scientist Who Mapped Solar Winds, Dies at 76, September 13, 1995.