William Shockley

At the age of 23, he married Jean Alberta Bailey from Iowa in August 1933. In March 1934 they had their first child, Alison. Later the couple divorced.

He married Emmy Lanning, a psychiatric nurse, later. She outlived him by 18 years and passed away on April 28, 2007.

He was an accomplished climber and made many hikes and climbs in the “Shawangunks” in the Hudson River Valley. A route there is named “Shockley’s Ceiling”. He was an amateur magician, speaker, as well as lecturer.

William Bradford Shockley Jr. was born on February 13, 1910, in London, England. His father, William Hillman Shockley was a mining engineer and his mother, Mary Bradford was the first female US Deputy mining surveyor. His parents were American and he grew up in Palo Alto, California from age 3.

Shockley studied at the California Institute of Technology and received his Bachelors of Science in 1932.

He studied for his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Professor J.C. Slater. His thesis was on the energy band structure of Sodium Chloride. He received his doctorate in 1936. The same year, he joined Bell Labs in New Jersey and began research on semiconductors. The research group was headed by Clinton Davisson. He wrote many fundamental papers and had them published in “Physical Review”.

At Bell Labs, Shockley was involved in radar research. This was when World War II broke out. During the war, in May 1942, he served as the director of research for the U.S. Navy's Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group.

In 1944, he organized a training program for B-29 bomber pilots and took tours around the world to analyze results. The training involved the usage of new radar bomb sights. For this, he was awarded the “Medal for Merit” on October 17, 1946.

He was asked to prepare a report on the casualties from Japan’s invasion in July 1945 by the War Department. His report laid the foundation for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and Japan’s eventual surrender.

In 1945, after the war ended, he was invited to form a solid state group involving Stanley Morgan, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, Gerald Pearson, Robert Gibney, and Hilbert Moore. They were handed the responsibility of finding a solid-state alternative to glass vacuum tubes. After many failures and attempts, the group was able to submit a paper on their findings in 1946.

Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain invented the point-contact transistor in 1947 which replaced traditional bulky transistors. This work earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Shockley’s “point-contact transistor” was a major influence in helping usher an age of micro-miniature electronics. He managed a research team that consisted of himself, John Bardeen, and Walter H. Brattain and used semiconductors to amplify electronic signals. The transistor was further improved which replaced the bulky and less-efficient vacuum tubes.