William Shockley facts for kids

William Shockley
William Shockley
Born	William Bradford Shockley Jr. ; February 13, 1910; Greater London, England,; United Kingdom
Died	August 12, 1989 (aged 79); Stanford, California, United States
Nationality	American
Alma mater	MIT; Caltech;
Known for	Point-contact transistor and BJT; Shockley diode equation; Read-Shockley equation; Shockley diode; Shockley–Ramo theorem; Haynes-Shockley experiment; Shockley–Queisser limit;
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1956); Comstock Prize in Physics (1953); Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1953); Wilheln Exner Medal (1963); IEEE Medal of Honor (1980);
	Scientific career
Institutions	Bell Labs; Shockley Semiconductor; Stanford University;
Doctoral advisor	John C. Slater

William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. Shockley was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".

As a result of Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s, California's "Silicon Valley" became a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his later life, Shockley was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and became a proponent of eugenics.