Quoting from the "Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology":
American physicist
Born: Cambridge, Mass, 1882, died 1961
Bridgman's scientific life was entirely bound up with Harvard. After an education in the public schools of Newton, Mass, he entered Harvard in 1900, earning successive degrees there up to his Ph.D. in 1908. Immediately after obtaining his doctorate he joined the faculty, attaining a professional position in 1913 and remaining until his retirement in 1954.
Even as a candidate for the doctor's degree, Bridgman was already working in the field of high pressures. In 1905 the equipment with which he was working failed under the pressures he wanted to use and he turned his attention to the design of equipment that would not fail. In the early apparatus it had been the seals at the joints that had given. Bridgman therefore designed seals that squeezed tighter together as the pressure increased so that the only strength of the material making up the chamber was the limit of permissible pressure. Quite early in the game he reached a pressure of 20,000 atmospheres (128 tons to the square inch).
By using stronger materials and by putting pressure on his container from outside, he kept reaching higher and higher pressures. Through use of these higher pressures he was able to study new forms of solids. This was valuable not only in itself, but also for the light it threw on substances and processes deep within the earth. A dramatic consequence was announced in 1955 when with Bridgman as a consultant, research workers at General Electric were able finally to form synthetic diamonds by the use of a combination of high pressure and high temperature. For his work Bridgman had received the 1946 Nobel Prize in physics.
Bridgman was also an important philosopher of science, writing thoughtful books on the nature of physics. In 1961, almost eighty years old, with over a half a century behind him, and incurably ill, Bridgman committed suicide.