Prior to this development, there was no way to cool electromagnets, limiting their maximum flux density.
Bitter entered the University of Chicago in 1919, but chose to leave his studies there in 1922 to visit Europe.
[citation needed] Under a National Research Council fellowship, Bitter studied gases at Caltech with Robert Andrews Millikan, from 1928 to 1930.
[citation needed] With a Guggenheim Fellowship, Bitter travelled to England in 1933 and worked at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University.
He often traveled to England to find ways to demagnetize British ships to protect them from a new type of German mine, which used a compass needle to trigger detonation.
)[citation needed] After the war, Bitter returned to MIT and joined the faculty of the physics department.