Walter Houser Brattain

@Physicists, Timeline and Life

Walter Houser Brattain was an American physicist who jointly received the ‘Nobel Prize in Physics’ in 1956

Feb 10, 1902

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Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: February 10, 1902
  • Died on: October 13, 1987
  • Nationality: American
  • Famous: Princeton University, University Of Minnesota, University Of Oregon, Scientists, Physicists
  • Spouses: Emma Jane (Kirsch) Miller, Keren Gilmore
  • Siblings: Mari Brattain, R. Robert Brattain
  • Known as: Walter H. Brattain

Walter Houser Brattain born at

Xiamen, Fujian, China

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Birth Place

He married Keren Gilmore, a chemist, in 1935. Their son, William G. Brattain was born in 1943. William became a puzzle designer.

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Personal Life

After Keren died of cancer on April 10, 1957, Brattain married Emma Jane (Kirsch) Miller, a mother of three, in 1958.

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Personal Life

He suffered from Alzheimer's disease and died in a nursing home in Seattle, Washington on October 13, 1987. He was interred in the Pomeroy City Cemetery in Garfield County, Washington, US. A Y-shaped circuitry and schematics symbolizing transistor is engraved on his tombstone.

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Personal Life

Walter H. Brattain was born on February 10, 1902, in Xiamen, Fujian, China to Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser Brattain. His father was a teacher at the ‘Ting-Wen Institute’ in China while his mother was a talented mathematician. His sister was Mari Brattain and brother was R. Robert Brattain who became a physicist.

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Childhood & Early Life

In 1903, when he was still a toddler, he returned to the US with his mother, while his father joined them later.

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Childhood & Early Life

He spent several years of his childhood in Spokane, Washington. In 1911 he moved with his family to a cattle ranch near Tonasket, Washington. He attended three high schools in Washington - first the ‘Queen Anne High School’ in Seattle (1915-16), then the ‘Tonasket High School’ in Tonasket (1916-18) and thereafter the ‘Moran School’ in Bainbridge Island (1920).

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Childhood & Early Life

He joined ‘Whitman College’ in Walla Walla, Washington, from where his parents had graduated. In 1924 he earned a BS degree with a double major in mathematics and physics. He and his classmates E. John Workman, Vladimir Rojansky and Walker Bleakney, who achieved great heights in their respective careers, became famous as “the four horsemen of physics".

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Childhood & Early Life

In 1926 he obtained MA degree from ‘University of Oregon’ in Eugene.

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Childhood & Early Life

In 1927 he joined ‘National Bureau of Standards’ in Washington, D.C., as a radio engineer and aided in developing piezoelectric frequency standards.

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Career

He joined research and scientific development company, ‘Bell Telephone Laboratories’ (presently ‘Nokia Bell Labs’) as a research physicist in August 1929 and started working with Joseph A. Becker on the thermally induced flow of charge carriers in copper oxide rectifiers. Some of their experiments on thermal emission catered to the experimental confirmation of the Sommerfeld theory, developed principally by German theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld.

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Career

Brattain examined rectification and photo-effects on semiconductor surfaces of silicon and cuprous oxide and invented photo-effect at the free surface of a semiconductor.

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Career

During that period vacuum tubes had widespread application in the telephone industry even though these lacked efficiency and reliability. Thus the ‘Bell Laboratories’ made effort in developing an alternate technology.

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Career

In the early 1930s Brattain and William B. Shockley attempted in developing a field effect transistor at the ‘Bell Laboratories’, by working on the concept of a semiconductor amplifier that applied copper oxide, but remained unsuccessful.

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Career

He was jointly awarded the ‘Nobel Prize in Physics’ in 1956 with John Bardeen and William Shockley by King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.

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Awards & Achievements