7 William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain 7science-fiction author in his spare time. A month later
Bell Labs announced the revolutionary invention in a
press conference held at its New York City headquarters,
heralding Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley as the three
coinventors of the transistor. The three were awarded the
1956 Nobel Prize for Physics for their invention, which
ushered in the age of microminiature electronics.
William Shockley
William Bradford Shockley studied physics at the
California Institute of Technology (B.S., 1932) and at
Harvard University (Ph.D., 1936). He joined the technical
staff of Bell Labs in 1936 and there began experiments
with semiconductors that ultimately led to the invention
and development of the transistor. During World War II,
he served as director of research for the Antisubmarine
Warfare Operations Research Group of the U.S. Navy.
After the war, Shockley returned to Bell Labs as director
of its research program on solid-state physics. Working
with Bardeen and Brattain, he resumed his attempts to
use semiconductors as amplifiers and controllers of elec-
tronic signals. The three men invented the point-contact
transistor in 1947 and a more effective device, the junction
transistor, in 1948. Shockley was deputy director of the
Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the Department
of Defense in 1954–55. He joined Beckman Instruments,
Inc., to establish the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory
in 1955. In 1958 he became lecturer at Stanford University,
California, and in 1963 he became the first Poniatoff
professor of engineering science there (emeritus, 1974).
He wrote Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors (1950).
During the late 1960s Shockley became a figure of
some controversy because of his widely debated views
on the intellectual differences between races. He held