The professor was also a staunch defender of academic freedom. As chair of Harvard's Physics Department in the 1950s, Bainbridge opposed the activities of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

As a teacher, Bainbridge was the author of several courses in the Harvard curriculum that incorporated new materials and new methods.

"Even in recent years when materials in experimental physics were changing very rapidly, Bainbridge was keeping up with it and designing courses around it," Purcell says.

Higgins Professor of Physics Sheldon L. Glashow, recalls a time when as a graduate student, he was taking an oral exam from Bainbridge, and was woefully under-prepared.

"All I recall is that he really wasn't very tough; he was [sympathetic]," says Glashow, who would go on to claim the Nobel Prize in physics. "He was a perfectly lovable gentlemen."

Bainbridge was born in 1904 in Cooperstown, N.Y., and spent most of his young life studying at Horace Mann, a prestigious New York school. He earned his bachelor's degree from MIT and his doctorate in physics from Princeton University.

After several post-doctoral fellowships, Bainbridge was hired by Harvard in 1934, and would not change schools until he retired.

He earned a promotion to associate professor in 1938. In 1946, after his war efforts had made him a national hero, he earned tenure from Harvard, and stayed on until retiring in 1975.