Physicist — William Bradford Shockley (London 1910 – Stanford 1989) was an American physicist, among the key figures in the electronics revolution. He graduated from MIT and worked at Bell Laboratories, where he led the semiconductor research group. In 1947 his group, together with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, invented the transistor, the semiconductor device that would replace thermionic valves and make modern electronics possible. Shockley later developed the theory of the junction transistor, for which the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Having moved to California, he contributed through his company to the birth of Silicon Valley, although his career was overshadowed in later years by widely repudiated eugenicist and racist views.
Trivia
Some young engineers who left his company in disagreement, the so-called ‘traitorous eight’, founded Fairchild Semiconductor, effectively giving rise to Silicon Valley.
Theories and contributions
- Invention of the transistor — Semiconductor device for amplifying and switching electrical signals, the foundation of modern electronics.
- Junction transistor theory — Theoretical model of how p-n junctions and bipolar transistors work.
- Shockley diode equation — Describes the current in a p-n junction: .
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1 linked atom.