American Physicist, Inventor, and Nobel Laureate
William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989), was an American physicist and inventor. He co-invented the transistor, along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain. All three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his later life, he was a professor at Stanford and became a strong advocate of eugenics.
Early years
William Shockley was born in London, England to American parents, and from the age of three, he was raised in his family's hometown of Palo Alto, California. His father, William Sr., was a mining engineer who spoke eight languages. His mother, Mary, grew up in the American West, graduated from Stanford University, and became the first female US Deputy mining surveyor.
In 1932, he received his Bachelor of Science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He married Iowan Jean Bailey in August 1933. The following year, they had a baby girl, Alison. They also had a son, Richard who became a physicist. Shockley was awarded his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. The title of his doctoral thesis was Electronic Bands in Sodium Chloride. After receiving his doctorate, he joined a research group headed by Clinton Davisson at Bell Labs in New Jersey. The succeeding few years were productive ones for him. He published a number of papers on solid state physics in Physical Review.
In 1938, he received his first patent, "Electron Discharge Device" on electron multipliers.
Later years
He was in the navy during World War II, in charge of the anti-submarine warfare research unit. He returned to Bell Telephone as director of transistor physics reseach. In 1956 he was awarded a co-share of the Nobel Prize for Physics for his part in the development of the radio transistor. Between 1963-1974, he was professor of engineering at Stanford University. Although it didn't appear to sever his ties with Stanford, he gave a cause for controversy with his assertions that Blacks were inferior to Whites, following standardized intelligence tests. He continued this assertions that there were intellectual differences between races.
Shockley remarried, and died in Palo, Alto, at the age of 79.
Sources:
Video Credit:
William Shockley, www.nobelprize.org. Accessed 13 Feb 2016.
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