William Shockley

William Shockley was an American physicist and engineer who co-invented the transistor and shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. He later founded a semiconductor company in California and became a controversial public advocate of eugenics.

John Bardeen: John Bardeen was an American physicist who co-invented the transistor and twice won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Bardeen shared the transistor invention with Shockley and Walter Brattain, then left Shockley’s research group.
Transistor: A semiconductor device that controls electrical current and can amplify or switch electronic signals. The transistor is the invention Shockley helped create and the technology that defined his scientific career.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shockley earned his doctorate in physics there before joining Bell Labs.
Silicon Valley: Silicon Valley is a region in California known for its concentration of technology companies and startup activity. Shockley’s laboratory and the departures it provoked helped seed the region’s semiconductor industry.
Walter Brattain: Walter Brattain was an American physicist who co-invented the transistor and shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. Brattain and Bardeen built the first working point-contact transistor while Shockley pursued a different design.
Point-contact transistor: The first working transistor, using two closely spaced metal contacts on a semiconductor surface to control current. Bardeen and Brattain demonstrated this design in 1947, prompting Shockley to devise a more robust alternative.
Quantum mechanics: Quantum mechanics is the physical theory describing matter and energy at atomic and subatomic scales. Shockley’s semiconductor research relied on quantum explanations of electrons in solids.
Fairchild Semiconductor: Fairchild Semiconductor was an American company that became a major early producer of silicon transistors and integrated circuits. Eight former Shockley employees founded it after leaving his laboratory in 1957.
Gordon Moore: Gordon Moore was an American chemist and semiconductor executive who co-founded Intel and formulated Moore’s law. Moore was among the engineers who left Shockley Semiconductor to establish Fairchild Semiconductor.
Bipolar junction transistor: A semiconductor transistor with two junctions that uses both electrons and holes to control current. Shockley developed its theory and design after the point-contact transistor breakthrough.

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