William Shockley

William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) American physicist, eugenicist and co-inventor of the transistor with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. His attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 60s led directly to the creation of Silicon Valley. In his later life, Shockley was a "superb" professor at Stanford.http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/shockley/shockley3.html

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February 13 - 1910 - August 12 - 1989 - American - Physicist - Eugenicist - Inventor - Transistor - John Bardeen - Walter Houser Brattain - Nobel Prize in physics - Silicon Valley

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Born in London, England, to American parents, and raised in California, he received his Bachelor of Science degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1932 and his doctorate from MIT in 1936. Notably, the title of his doctoral thesis was Calculation of Electron Wave Functions in Sodium Chloride Crystals.

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London - England - American - California - California Institute of Technology - 1932 - MIT - 1936

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After receiving his doctorate, he immediately joined a research group headed by Dr. C.J. Davisson at Bell Labs in New Jersey, and began moving up the management ladder. In the mid 1940's, Shockley's group, consisting of Bardeen and Brattain, sought a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Shockley insisted on working alone, leaving his two researchers by themselves, occasionally dropping by to direct their work.

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Bell Labs - New Jersey

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December of 1947 was Bell Labs' "Miracle Month", when Bardeen and Brattain succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor -- without Shockley. Even so, Shockley thought he should have the patent, since the team's work was motivated by Shockley's idea using field effects. He made efforts to have the patent written in his name only and told Bardeen and Brattain of his intentions. At the same time he secretly continued his own work to build a different sort of transistor based on junctions instead of point contacts; he expected this kind of design would be more likely to be viable commercially.

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1947 - Bell Labs - Miracle Month - Point-contact transistor

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Bell Lab attorneys soon discovered that Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld. Although the patent appeared breakable, Bell Labs decided it could not risk the chance of its patent being rejected, and therefore based its patent application only on the Bardeen-Brattain design. Shockley's name was not on the resulting patent.

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During this time Shockley worked out the critical ideas of drift and diffusion and the differential equations that govern the flow of electrons in solid state crystals. He also conceived of the possibility of minority carrier injection that led to his concepts for a sandwich transistor weeks later. This would lead to the junction transistor, invented by Shockley on July 5, 1951. He obtained a patent for this invention.

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Sandwich transistor - Junction transistor - July 5 - 1951

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The ensuing publicity generated by the "invention of the transistor" limelighted Shockley. Shockley was a popular speaker/lecturer and was often consulted by Washington (DC) and the military. This further infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain. Shockley later blocked the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen eventually quit, while Brattain refused to work with Shockley further.

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His abrasive management style caused him to be passed over for executive promotion at Bell Labs, which correctly felt he was a greater asset as a research scientist and theorist. Shockley wanted the power and profit he felt he deserved. He resigned from Bell Labs in 1953 and moved back to the California Institute of Technology.

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Shockley was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, along with Bardeen and Brattain.

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Nobel Prize in physics - 1956

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