A former professor of physics at New York University, Lippmann is mainly known for the Lippmann-Schwinger equation, a widely used tool in non-relativistic scattering theory, which he formulated together with his doctoral supervisor Julian Schwinger[4] Bernard Lippmann was born in Brooklyn, New York City, in 1914.
[5] After initially attending the Polytechnic School of Brooklyn, where he attained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, he switched to physics and was admitted to the degree of Master of Science at the University of Michigan in 1935[6] Subsequently, Lippmann entered the industry, where he held various engineering roles until the entry of the United States into the Second World War when he joined MIT's Radiation Laboratory.
After the war, in 1946, he began his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Harvard under the supervision of Schwinger,[7] while also leading the radar receiver group at the Submarine Signal Company in Boston (later amalgamated into Raytheon).
After being awarded his doctorate in 1948, Lippmann spent the subsequent two decades conducting research at several American institutions.
Following his retirement, Lippmann relocated to California, where he served as the manager of the theoretical physics department at the Physics International Company in San Leandro, California, a manufacturer of intense cathode ray generators, as well as a consultant for the Stanford Linear Accelerator.