Shockley, William B.
William Shockley is best known as the inventor of the junction transistor. For this and other contributions to transistors physics, he received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with his two former colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories, John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain.
Shockley was born on 13 February 1910, in London of American parents. Reared in California, he received the B.S. degree at the California lnstitute of Technology in 1932 and the Ph. D. degree at the Massachusetts lnstitute of Technology in 1936.
He joined the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1936. During World War II, on leave of absence from Bell, he served as director of research for the Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group and as expert consultant for the Office of the Secretary of War. Returning to Bell after the war, he became director of the solid state physics research program, which saw the development of the first experiments on early junction transistors. In 1954, Shockley was named director of transistor physics research at Bell.
He was visiting lecturer at Princeton in 1946 and scientific advisor for the policy council of the joint Research and Development Board from 1947 to 1949. During 1954 and 1955, he was visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology and served as deputy director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group for the United States Department of Defense.
In 1955, Shockley left Bell Laboratories to join Beckman Instruments, Inc. and establish the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, for research, development, and production of new transistor and other semiconductor devices. This became the Shockley Transistor Corporation, a subsidiary of Beckman Instruments, in 1958. In April 1960, this organization was acquired by the Clevite Corporation, and Shockley continued as a consultant to the Shockley Laboratories of Clevite Transistor until its sale to International Telephone and Telegraph in 1965. In 1965, Shockley renewed his association with Bell Telephone Laboratories in the capacity of executive consultant. He retired from this position in February 1975.
Shockley was a lecturer at Stanford from 1958 to 1963. In 1963, he was named the first Alexander M. Poniatoff Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Stanford University. On September 1, 1975, he became Alexander Poniatoff Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus.
Shockley was a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of the U.S. Army from 1951 to 1963, and of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board from 1958 to 1962. He has been a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee Panel on Scientific and Technical Manpower since 1962. He served as senior consultant to the Army Scientific Advisory Panel and was a member of the Scientific and Technology Advisory Committee to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Shockley's awards for scientific achievement and public service include: the Medal for Merit from the Office of the Secretary of War (1946); Air Force Association Citation of Honor (1951); the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Prize (1952); U.S. Army Certificate of Appreciation (1953); American Physical Society Buckley Prize (1953); National Academy of Sciences Comstock Award (1954); American Society of Mechanical Engineers Holley Medal (1963); Oesterreichiescher Gewerbeverein of Austria Wilhelm-Exner Medal (1963); California Institute of Technology Alumni Distinguished Service Award (1966); National Aeronautics and Space Administration Certificate of Appreciation 8 (1969); NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award (1969); the IEEE Gold Medal on the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Transistor (1973). In February 1974 Shockley, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which is administered by the National Council of Patent Law Association. He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1980, "For the invention of the junction transistor, the analog and the junction field-effect transistor, and the theory underlying their operation."
Shockley has received honorary doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania (1955); Rutgers University (1956); and Gustavus Adolphus College (1963). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and the honorary societies Sigma Xi and Tau Beta Pi.
Over one hundred of Shockley's articles appear in scientific and technical journals. He is the author of Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors (1950); editor of Imperfections of Nearly Perfect Crystals (1952); and co-author of a book, Mechanics. More than ninety United States Patents have been granted for his inventions. (Editor's Note: Dr. Shockley passed away on 12 August 1989.)
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