William Shockley facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
William Shockley
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William Bradford Shockley Jr.
February 13, 1910 |
| Died | August 12, 1989 (aged 79) Stanford, California, US
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| Nationality | American |
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| Doctoral advisor | John C. Slater |
William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He led a research team at Bell Labs. This team included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. They received it for their work on semiconductors and for discovering the transistor effect.
Shockley tried to sell a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s. This helped turn California's Silicon Valley into a major center for electronics.
Later in his life, as a professor at Stanford University, Shockley became known for his controversial ideas about race.
Early Life and Education
William Shockley was born in London, England, on February 13, 1910. His American parents moved the family to Palo Alto, California, when he was three. His father, William Hillman Shockley, was a mining engineer. His mother, May, was the first female U.S. Deputy mining surveyor.
Shockley was taught at home until he was eight years old. His parents did not like public schools. He learned some physics from a neighbor who was a professor at Stanford. He later went to Palo Alto Military Academy. He graduated from Hollywood High School in 1927.
He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech in 1932. He then got his PhD from MIT in 1936. His PhD work was about "Electronic Bands in Sodium Chloride."
Career Highlights
Shockley was one of the first people hired by Bell Labs in 1936. He joined a team that was looking for new ways to make electronics. Bell Labs wanted to find solid-state parts to replace vacuum tubes. These tubes were used in their telephone system.
Shockley worked on designs using copper-oxide semiconductors. In 1939, he and Walter Brattain tried to build a prototype. It did not work.
He published important papers on solid-state physics. In 1938, he received his first patent for an "Electron Discharge Device."
War Work and Recognition
During World War II, Shockley's research stopped. He worked on radar in Manhattan, New York City. In 1942, he joined Columbia University to help with anti-submarine efforts. He helped find ways to fight submarines. He also improved convoying methods.
In 1944, he created a training program for B-29 bomber pilots. This program taught them to use new radar bomb sights. He traveled around the world to check the results. For his war work, he received the Medal for Merit in 1946.
In July 1945, the War Department asked Shockley for a report. This report looked at how many people might be hurt if the US invaded Japan. This report was considered when the US decided to use atomic bombs to end the war.
Developing the Transistor
After the war, Bell Labs created a solid-state physics group. Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan led this group. It included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Their goal was to find a solid-state replacement for fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers.
Early experiments based on Shockley's ideas failed. The team then focused on "surface states" of semiconductors. They met often to discuss their work.
In 1946, Bardeen wrote a paper on surface states. Brattain began experiments to study these states. They found evidence of power amplification. This happened when Gerald Pearson, following Shockley's idea, put voltage on a liquid droplet.
Bell Labs lawyers found that Julius Lilienfeld had patented a similar idea in 1930. Shockley's name was not on the patent applications for the new transistor. This made him upset. He felt his work was important to the invention.
Shockley then worked secretly on a different type of transistor. He wanted to build one based on "junctions" instead of "point contacts." He thought this design would be stronger and easier to make.
In 1948, another team member, John N. Shive, showed that "holes" could move through germanium. This discovery helped Shockley. A few months later, Shockley invented a new, stronger transistor. It had a "sandwich" structure with layers. This design became very important for most transistors.
Shockley also wrote a major book, Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors, published in 1950. This book explained how electrons move in solid crystals. It became a key reference for scientists.
His new "junction transistor" was announced in July 1951.
In 1951, Shockley was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was only 41 years old. He received many other awards.
The public often gave Shockley all the credit for the transistor. This bothered Bardeen and Brattain. Bell Labs tried to present all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually angered Bardeen and Brattain. Bardeen left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley anymore.
Shockley left Bell Labs around 1953. He took a job at Caltech.
Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory
In 1956, Shockley started Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California. This company was the first to work on silicon semiconductor devices in what became Silicon Valley.
Shockley hired many smart people. But he was a difficult manager. His biographer called him "the worst manager in the history of electronics." He was bossy and often seemed paranoid. For example, he once demanded lie detector tests after a secretary got a small cut.
In 1957, eight of his best researchers left. They were known as the "traitorous eight." They started their own company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Shockley Semiconductor never fully recovered from this loss. It was bought by another company three years later. Over the next 20 years, many new companies were started by people who had worked at Fairchild.
A group of about thirty former colleagues still meet to remember their time with Shockley. They say he was "the man who brought silicon to Silicon Valley."
Views on Race
After leaving Shockley Semiconductor, he joined Stanford University. He became a professor there in 1963.
In the last 20 years of his life, Shockley became known for his strong views on race and human intelligence. He believed that people with lower intelligence were having more children. He thought this would lead to a drop in overall intelligence. He also claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people due to genetics.
Shockley's ideas were very controversial. Many people, including scientists, disagreed with him. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes his work as "that of a racist crank."
He often taped his phone calls with reporters. He would then send them transcripts. He even thought about making reporters take a quiz on his work.
In 1982, Shockley ran for a Republican Senate seat in California. He did not win, getting less than 1% of the vote. By this time, his controversial views had damaged his reputation.
Personal Life
William Shockley married Jean Bailey in 1933. They had two sons and a daughter. They separated in 1953. In 1955, he married Emily Lanning, a psychiatric nurse.
Shockley was a skilled rock climber. He often climbed at the Shawangunks in New York. One climbing route there is called "Shockley's Ceiling." He was also known for being a good speaker and an amateur magician. He once made a bouquet of roses appear at the end of a speech. He also enjoyed raising ant colonies.
Death
Shockley died from prostate cancer in 1989 at age 79. At the time of his death, he was not close with most of his friends and family. Only his second wife, Emmy Lanning, was with him. His children reportedly learned of his death from the newspaper. He is buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California.
Honors and Awards
- Medal for Merit for his war work (1946).
- Comstock Prize in Physics from the National Academy of Sciences (1953).
- First winner of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1953).
- Co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain (1956).
- Holley Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1963).
- Wilhelm Exner Medal (1963).
- Honorary science doctorates from several universities.
- IEEE Medal of Honor from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1980).
- Named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time magazine.
- Listed as number 3 on the Boston Globe's 2011 list of top innovators at MIT.
Patents
Shockley was granted over ninety US patents. Some important ones include:
- , US 2502488 Semiconductor Amplifier. (1950) – His first patent about transistors.
- , US 2569347 Circuit element utilizing semiconductive material. (1951) – His earliest transistor patent application.
- , US 2655609 Bistable Circuits. (1953) – Used in computers.
- , US 2787564 Forming Semiconductive Devices by Ionic Bombardment. (1957) – About adding impurities to materials.
- , US 3031275 Process for Growing Single Crystals. (1962) – Improvements for making basic materials.
- , US 3053635 Method of Growing Silicon Carbide Crystals. (1962) – Exploring other semiconductors.
See also
In Spanish: William Bradford Shockley para niños
