After holding postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington in 1967. An enthusiastic hiker and mountaineer, he was drawn to the school by its easy access to the outdoors.
By then, what Nobel Prize laureate Kip Thorne, a professor at Caltech, indicates that the golden age of black hole research was in full swing, and Dr. Bardeen was being swept up in international meetings. In one, in Paris in 1967, he met Nancy Thomas, a Connecticut high school teacher who was trying to improve her French. They married in 1968.
In addition to his son William, who is a senior vice president and director of strategy for The New York Times Company, and his brother William, Dr. Bardeen’s wife is survived by him, along with another son, David, and two grandchildren. Sister Elizabeth Gretke passed away in 2000.
Dr. Bardeen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as his brother and father.