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Biographical Memoirs: Volume 68 (1995)

Chapter: William Bradford Shockley

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Suggested Citation:"William Bradford Shockley." National Academy of Sciences. 1995. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 68. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4990.
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WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY February 1 3, 191 O-August 1 2, 1989 BY JOHN L. MOLL WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY WAS A major participant in the physical discoveries en c! inventions that are the basis of the transistor era en c! the twentieth-century elec- tronics industrial revolution. Transistor circuits are basic to almost all of our technological advances. Shockley was born in London, England, on February 13, 1910. His parents were Americans. His father, William Hiliman Shockley, was a mining engineer, anti his mother, the former May BraciforcI, ha(1 been a fe(leral deputy surveyor of min- eral lancis. In 1933 Shockley married Jean Alberta Bailey. They hacl two sons, William ant! Richard, and a daughter, Alison Lanelli. They (livorce(1 in 1955, and in the same year Shockley marriecl Emmy Lanning. When Shockley was three years oicI, the family returned to the United States and settled in Palo Alto, California. His parents consi(lered that they could give their son a better education at home than in the public schools. They therefore kept him out of school until he was eight years oIcI. His mother taught him mathematics, and both parents encouraged his scientific interests. Professor PerIey A. Ross, a Stanford physicist and neighbor in Palo Alto, exerted an especially important influence in stimulating his interest in 305

306 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS science. Shockley was a frequent visitor at the Ross home, playing with the professor's two daughters and becoming a substitute son. When he entered high school, Shockley spent two years at the Palo Alto Military Academy. He then enrolled for a brief time in the Los Angeles Coaching School to stucly physics. He f~nishecl his high school education at Holly- wooc! High, graduating in 1927. He started his college education the same year at the University of California at Los Angeles. After a year at UCLA, he enterer! the California Institute of Technology in Pasa- clena. He had a number of outstanding teachers at CalTech. William V. Houston taught the introductory theoretical phys- ics course. In acictition, Richard C. Tolman and Linus PauTing were professors. Shockley earner! his bachelor of science degree in physics in 1932. Shockley went to MIT on a teaching fellowship. He ob- tainecI his Ph.D. degree in 1936. His thesis title was "Calcu- lation of Electron Wave Functions in Soclium ChIoricle Crys- tals." The solict-state physics he learner! at MTT prover! to be the basis of his contributions to physics and electronics. An account of an acquaintanceship between Frect Seitz and Shockley has kinkily been made available by Professor Seitz. This account covers their college days and includes items up to Shockley's later years. ~ am inclucling it with his permission in an almost uneclitec! form: One of Slater's students was William Shockley whom I had known since [my] undergraduate days. Among other things, Shockley demonstrated, with the use of an empty lattice model, that the precise determination of band gaps for real crystals with the use of the cellular method would re- quire highly evolved techniques. Shockley went on to join the Bell Tele- phone Laboratories where, along with Bardeen and Brattain, he played such an important role in the invention of the transistor after World War II.

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 307 While on the Stanford campus in August of 1932 and in the initial phases of making plans to return to New Jersey, Mrs. Ross approached me to say that Mrs. Shockley, the mother of William Shockley, had called her from Hollywood to say that her son had received an appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was planning to drive east with his De Soto convertible. Would I care to drive with him and share the costs? I agreed. Thus began one of the most carefree two-week periods I have enjoyed in the intervening decades. Shockley, I soon realized, was then strongly influenced by the Holly- wood culture of the time, fancying himself to be a cross between Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Bulldog Drummond with perhaps a dash of Ronald Coleman. Moreover, he accepted pronouncements of the Hollywood stars on political, social and economic issues with the same degree of serious- ness that I would have taken of those of Governor Rolph or President Hoover. Moreover, he had a loaded pistol in the glove compartment. I was then handy with a rifle but looked askance at the pistol. Shockley's special air and the pistol eventually brought him to grief as he drove through Newark, New Jersey on the very ancient Route l of that day, after leaving me off at Princeton where he spent a day. He was spotted by the Newark police who took him to be a suspicious character. The pistol clinched the matter. He never gave me the details but he evidently had a difficult inter- view with the Newark judge who tmade] very imaginative use of the En- glish language. We selected the southern route through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas, eventually reaching the Lincoln Highway in Ohio. Along the way, we visited Carlsbad Caves and the Kentucky Caves including the then famous Floyd Collins Crystal Cave in Kentucky. This had been discovered by Collins who, somewhat later, had been entrapped and killed in a further attempt at cave exploration one that was featured for days in the national press as rescuers tried in vain to reach him before he died. His presumed body was on exhibit in a glass covered coffin, although I must admit that the object we witnessed looked surprisingly like a dummy in a very inex- pensive clothing store. The guide, however, assured us on its authenticity declaring, "He was, as you can see, a very handsome man." We also encountered torrential rains in Texas after leaving Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The rains were so heavy that the highway was obliterated. We parked the car off the highway at a rise and spent the night wandering through the desert. This gave Shockley an opportunity to fire his pistol on several occasions when he decided to ward off the possibility

308 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS of meeting serious danger from a group of coyotes howling in the distance. It also caused a gasoline station attendant at a nearby store to declare to us the next morning that the local police had been alerted to the fact that two desperadoes were loose in the area. He suggested we keep a lookout. Both of our careers were almost cut short by an incident that oc- curred as we were traversing the hills of Kentucky in the early evening on a narrow, two-lane road, one lane in each direction. I was driving and had a drop-off on my right. As we rounded a curve we found speeding down toward us two trucks which were racing one another and taking up both lanes. This race was evidently being run in a playful manner, typical of the spirited, young hill folks. By the grace of the Lord, I had just enough shoulder to squeeze by the oncoming truck with perhaps an inch to spare. To the best of my knowledge I have never been closer to instant death than in those few seconds. One might ask which, if any, of the most prominent attributes which would characterize Shockley later in life, when he was a famous scientist, were evident at this early stage of his career. It was clear from the start, of course, that he was unusually intelligent. His later fame, and indeed notori- ety, rested upon two characteristics. First and foremost was the ability to seek out the core issues in a scientific problem and bring them to the surface in a dramatically clear way with the use of either theoretical or experimental measures- an ability which in some ways matched those of Enrico Fermi although in a different area of physics. In this respect, his most creative period occurred when he was at the Bell Laboratories and between about 1940 and 1955. Having known him quite early in his career, I was never surprised at this aspect of his creativity. Later on he attempted to apply his ability to the study of differences in the characteristics of ethnic groups, particularly differences in intelli- gence as measured in various ways. While objective studies of physiological or other differences in such groups clearly have a place in science, it is quite a different matter to advocate at the same time that any conclusions drawn from such work be used as a basis for actions, forceful or otherwise, with respect to eugenics. Here, unfortunately, Shockley became mired in a morass of his own making because of his second characteristic. He appar- ently was unable to place himself in the shoes of others and thereby under- stand that advocating strong eugenic measures in a highly diverse society is bound to be highly disruptive. Yet he advocated that such a course be followed to the very end of his life. Along with this was an unwillingness to admit that methods of analysis which work so well in relatively clear-cut

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 309 physical systems may become highly controversial and indeed counterpro- ductive in other circumstances. I saw an inkling of this second characteristic at an early period but did not take it seriously then. He was inclined to believe that society should be governed by what one might regard as an intellectually elite group, not very well defined at this early stage, rather than by majority decisions as in a democratic society. Unlike many other intellectuals, he never coupled this belief to any ongoing political system, Marxist or Fascist. He was guided entirely by his own internal sense of logic. Early in 1933 William Hansen received an appointment at the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology. Since Shockley wanted to drive west and Hansen wanted to participate in the advanced summer physics lecture se- ries at the University of Michigan, the three of us started west together. The school at Michigan had not yet begun when we arrived but Robert Bacher, who held a postdoctoral position and was widely known for the book he and Samuel Goudsmit had published on atomic spectra, took us in hand and gave us an excellent tour of the department. At that time, he was in the midst of studying the hyperfine structure of atomic spectra derived from nuclear magnetic moments. Bacher was destined to play major roles in the future of American science. Five years later, then at Cornell Univer- sity, he would, with Hans Bethe, prepare a series of excellent overviews of the status of nuclear physics which contained much original material. Ten years later he would play one of the central roles in the development of the bomb at Los Alamos followed by a period as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. His career would be climaxed by an appointment to the California Institute of Technology in which he would serve as faculty member and one of President Lee DuBridge's principal colleagues. Our return trip to the West Coast was routine with one notable ex- ception. Shockley had switched the car registration from California to Mas- sachusetts during the winter. Whereas we had been greeted warmly wher- ever we went on the way east with California plates, there was conspicuous hostility west of the Mississippi River. The people there were prepared to blame the irresponsible easterners for the great economic depression they . . were experiencing. Throughout his life Shockley maintained an interesting set of hob- bies. Before I knew him he had been interested in slight of hand parlor tricks and maintained a great deal of skill over the years. He added a great deal of side interest to his student years at MIT by using his imagination

310 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS and sense of fun to keep the staff there on edge with subtle or not too subtle tricks. Many of my friends in industrial laboratories, being free of the aca- demic responsibilities for teaching, committee assignments and the like, managed to find time for hobbies along with their creative work in the laboratory. Shockley was no exception. At one point this involved hand over hand rock climbing, at another far more sophisticated rope climbing including semi-professional assaults on some of the more difficult peaks in the vicinity of Mont Blanc. In addition, he had one highly solitary hobby that displayed a special side of his makeup. He enjoyed establishing confined ant colonies in large glass containers. Part of the art he cultivated was to train the ants to take circuitous routes in seeking food and returning to their storage base. This frequently involved the construction of delicately balanced seesaws of straws which would tilt under the weight of an ant. The ant, near its home base, would climb on the lowered end of such a straw and, in moving past the fulcrum, would cause the straw to tilt so that the ant could reach the food supply. Once the ant left the straw, the latter would return to its original position. This would compel the ant to find an alternate path back. The return path usually involved one or more such challenging seesaws. Shockley could spend hours at the game. In the latter part of the 1980s, a dean of engineering at one of the large South African universities, who frequently visited Stanford University where Shockley spent his later years, invited the latter to visit South Africa in order to give a speech commemorating the invention of the transistor. Knowing of Shockley's controversial interest in studies of differences in ethnic groups, the dean emphasized that any presentation of his views on such matters would be completely inappropriate because the South African government was trying to find a way out of the morass it had entered into in setting up the laws concerning apartheid. Alas, when Shockley came to give his lecture he focused not at all on the transistor but on his personal views of the relative merits or demerits of various ethnic groups much to the great embarrassment of the audience and the dean. Shockley used a substantial part of his time in South Africa studying the trainability of local ants. When Shockley gracluated from MIT he took a job at Bell Telephone Laboratories to work with Clinton J. Da~risson.

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 311 Shockley s first project involved the design of an electron multiplier tube. He quickly became involved in solid-state physics research. In 1939 he proposed a kind of "field effect transistor that used wires imbedded in CuO2. The crevice as proposed has never worked, but a field effect device (invented in about 1960 by other people) has become the mainstay of the ul- tra-large-scale integrated circuit. The proposal that Shockley made in 1939 coincided with the laboratories' goal of re- placing the mechanical relays en cl vacuum tubes in the tele- phone exchange. Shockley turned to military projects during World War IT. He was first employed on the electronic design of radar equipment at Bell Labs. He then became research (Erector of the Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group set up by the Nav,v Department at Columbia University. He was in the Naval Operations Research position from 1942 until 1944. The new field of operations research treated military obiectives~ such as optimum patterns for dropping J J ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . ~ ~ · . ~ · 1 1~ ~ _ ~ 1 depth charges against submarines ana one time o~ aerial bombardments, as problems subject to scientific methods of analysis. From 1944 until 1945 he was an expert consult- ant to the office of the Secretary of War. In 1945 Shockley returnee to Bell Labs. Mervin Kelly, president of the labs, had decided to set up a research group to understand semiconductors from a basic physical viewpoint. There seemed to be a real possibility that semi- conductors could be used as electronic elements. Russell Oh! had a small laboratory at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey, where he "manufactured" point contact detectors for radar purposes during World War IT. Ohl had an insa- tiable curiosity, and, in addition to supplying the radar de- tectors, he discovered numerous unique properties of the silicon crystals that were available to him at the time. He

312 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS clemonstratecl the photoelectric effect at a pen junction, as well as other properties of crystals in relation to point con- tact detectors. These properties were not unclerstoocI, ex- cept in an empirical sense. A research group was former! under the supervision of Shockley and Stanley Morgan, a chemist. Shockley's job inclucled the task of recruiting from inside as well as outside the labs. He was able to assemble a very competent group of researchers, inclucling John Barcleen, Walter Brattain, Geralc! Pearson, Morgan Sparks, and others. In 1946 Bell Labs was engaged in a 30 percent staff re- cluction from its wartime peak while simultaneously resum- ing its prewar research activity with new insights. This re- duction was occurring at the same time that Shockley was starting his physical research on semiconductors. The application of quantum theory to solicI-state physics in the clecacle of the 1930s had greatly acivanced the knowI- edge of semiconductor properties, but much of the theory lackec! confirmation by quantitative experiments. The ra- ciar systems used germanium en c! silicon point contact de- tectors during WorIct War TI. The material quality was greatly acivancecT in support of this application. Thus, the time was ripe for the task at hanci. Although some members ap- proachec! their work as pure research, from the beginning it was clearly Shockley's goal to discover a solid-state ampli- fier as a replacement for the vacuum tube. Shockley returned to the iclea of the field effect transis- tor, in which an externally applied electric field! should, according to his calculations, moclulate the current in a germanium filament, much as the grid in a vacuum tube controls the anocle current. The experiments clone to achieve this effect were never successful. John Bardeen suggested that electrons were trapped in surface states en cl thus pre- ventec! the electric field from penetrating the crystal. This

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 313 insight led to a series of experiments on surface effects, inclu(ling the discovery of minority carrier injection by the point contact emitter by Bardeen ant] Brattain in 1947.~ The point contact transistor effect was clemonstrated for Bell Labs management by Brattain and Bardeen on Christ- mas Eve 1947. The discovery of the first semiconductor amplifier by Barcleen and Brattain in Shockley's department at Bell Labs, but without his participation, drove him to furious activity. Barcleen clescribecI the transistor action as minority carrier injection, but there was no clear proof that this was correct. In the process of devising an experimental test of the tran- sistor action, Shockley invented the junction transistor. He reported on this device in a paper in the Bell System Techni- caZ fournaP en c} gave a comprehensive review of the elec- tronic behavior of semiconductors in a book in ]930.3 The junction transistor was more difficult to achieve than the point contact, and it was not until lL951 that it was first built. This series of events starter! the electronic revolution that is arguably the most important development of the twentieth century. There had been relevant theoretical work in Englanct,4 Germany,5 and Russia6 on the study of band structure and the theory of rectifiers, and the American war effort hacl suppliecl some theory as well as experiments to the overall . ~ A. ·.. picture.' '['here were stall many missing pieces to the puzzle, and the next few years involved many researchers of various disciplines trying to unravel the essence of the behavior of semiconductors. For example, the properties of both the negative electrons and positive holes had to be cIarifiec! in the fourth-column elements: germanium, silicon, and clia- mond. The facts are detailed in The History of En~neerang Of Science in the Bell System Electronics Technology, ~ 925-] 975. The publication of Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors by Shockley

314 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS in 1950 was a bible to a generation of researchers and aca- . · . clemlclans. Shockley had always been a fast and unconventional thinker. His solutions to physical and mathematical prob- lems were simultaneously unconventional, quick, and usu- ally correct. He simply spun off new ideas that occupied · ~ experimenters tor years. He organized a weekly meeting in the auditorium for the presentation of new results; there were so many that the time was always filled. This was a period of high excitement and intellectual achievement; Shockley was the keystone. His example spurred his fellow workers on. His ability to approach a (liff~cult problem in a remarkably effective man- ner, to break the problem into its fundamental components, and to find an elegant solution was a strong factor in his approach to the general problem of achieving a more basic understanding of semiconductors. Shockley was adventuresome, professionally and as an in- diviclual. He publisher! without waiting for experimental confirmation anc! was usually prove c! correct. He was an enthusiastic amateur mountain climber. The Bell Labs caf- eteria had a stone facacle; at lunch time he would demon- strate his abilities by scaling the wall, gripping by his finger- tips. His enthusiasm for high-speec3 driving put fear into his passengers. As an amateur magician, he once challenger! the protocols of the august American Physical Society, f~n- ishing a speech at the annual meeting hv "mir~,lo,,~lv" 1 . . ,~ . . ~ . , _ , producing and flaunting a full bouquet of roses. Unfortunately, his technical insights were counterbalanced by his lack of insight into human relations. This led to a major division within his own group, and ultimately he took paths that he should have avoidecl. It also accounts for some of the widely divergent views of Shockley that have been expressed by otherwise intelligent indivicluals.

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 315 Shockley maintained activities outside Bell Labs through- out most of his career. He was a visiting lecturer at Princeton in ~ 946 ant! at CalTech in ~ 954 anct ~ 955. He also contin- ued to serve the government, as scientific aciviser for the Joint Research and Development Board from 1947 to 1949. He was deputy director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the Department of Defense in 1954 and :~955. In 1962 he became a member of the President's Science Acivi- sory Committee on Scientific and Technical Manpower. Shockley started the Shockley Semiconductor Laborato- ries in the Stanford industrial park in 1955 with help from the Beckman Instruments Company. This was the first semi- conductor company in what is now Silicon Valley. The in- tent was to cto research, clevelopment, and production of silicon switching crevices. Shockley was a better scientist than businessman or manager. The Shockley labs were not a fi- nancial success. Shockley lacked the business acumen and market sense that was possesses! by some of his employees; Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and a group of six other em- ployees left Shockley to form Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Clevite Transistor purchased the operation in 1960. Shockley remained! as a consultant. The company eventu- ally closest in 1969. Fret! Terman, then provost of Stanford University, was eager to see new industry in the new electronics technology started near Stanford and was starting a parallel effort in the Stanford electrical engineering department. There were numerous informal connections between Shockley's labs and the people who were starting Stanforcl's semiconductor pro- gram. An arrangement was macle whereby a new faculty member in electrical engineering spent an extender! pe- rio(1 working half time at the Shockley labs. Shockley hacT no official connection to the university when these half-time positions were set up. There was, neverthe-

316 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS less, an informal connection, with many professors en c! stu- clents meeting from time to time to discuss their ideas. Dealing with his personality was daunting to the typical cloctoral cancticiate, but the strongest and most inclepenclent students derived great benefit from their interactions. Shockley's as- sociation with Stanford became official in 1963, when he was appointed to be the first Alexander M. Poniatoff Pro- fessor of Engineering and Appliecl Science. He retired from Stanforc! in 1972. Shockley was in a serious automobile accident in July 1961. He sail! that while he was lying immobilized from the accident he read about a teenager with an {Q of 70 who had blinder! a delicatessen owner with acid. This incident made him determinecl to expose the "dysgenics" that was · · — occurring in our society. His approach to this exposition tract many of the appear- ances of his approach to earlier scientific problems but on close examination lacked the scientific method. His meth- ocls and conclusions were highly controversial. The subject itself is charger! with political and racial overtones. A great deal of data on the subject may have been fabricates! or at least mortified to suit a preconception. Shockley proposed some action on the topic by the National Academy of Sci- ences and was rejected. ~ believe that the combination of his strong personality ant! the rejection of action or sup- port from fellow scientists made him determined to prove that his conclusions were right. In 1965 Shockley renewed his association with Bell Labs in the capacity of executive consultant. His interests ex- pandecl into new areas, particularly (lomain wall motion in ferrites. He workocl first with H. I. Williams and then with Andrew Bobeck and his group. Shockley helped establish a new memory technology based on the controller! motion of small domains called magnetic bubbles. It was a complete

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 317 memory system but was unable to compete with the evolv- ing semiconductor memories. In an interview on the eve of his retirement from Bell Labs in 1975 he was asker! what recent technical developments he considered most impor- tant. There was no hesitation in his reply: One of the most striking things I've seen is the possibility of using gallium arsenide lasers and optical fibers in new transmission systems. Now you may observe that lasers and fibers will accomplish the same sorts of things as existing technology. But that's exactly what the transistor did: replaced the vacuum tube but at tremendous advantages in cost, power, space, and reliability. In 1980 Shockley brought a $~.25 million libel suit against the Atlanta Constitution for an article it published about his ideas on race ant] intelligence. He accused the newspaper of "falsely and maliciously" likening his ideas to the Nazi genetics experiments in World War IT. A token $] in ciam- ages was awarcled to him. He entered the 1982 Republican primary in California for the seat of retiring U.S. Senator S. T. Hayakawa. He was a single-issue candidate, warning of the threat of clysgenics. He came in eighth. In his later years Shockley was far more eager to talk about his theories on race and intelligence than his contributions to science. He cliecl in 1989 at the age of seventy-nine. Shockley cti- vicled his life between creative science and engineering and his crusacle against clysgenics. He devoted the last fifteen years of his life almost exclusively to clysgenics. The latter period increased the controversy that surroundecI him. The topic of ethnic intelligence is controversial. Bill Shockley macle no effort to calm the waters. His own behavior en- hanced a tendency to judge him by his later years, where he was definitely cleating with a subject that wouIc! not yield to his methocl of attack.

318 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Shockley lect the effort in the Physical Research Depart- ment at Bell Labs for about ten years en c! many critical advances were accomplishes! (luring that period. He spent almost forty years making contributions to soli(l-state phys- ics, was awarcled over ninety patents for his inventions, and macle many notable contributions to the scientific litera- ture. His patents en c! publications alone clo not measure his contribution to the advancement of technology. He cer- tainly inspired a generation of scientists to great achieve- ments. There are many testimonials to his capability of break- ing a problem down to its fundamental components and fincling unique solutions. A few public recognitions of his accomplishments are the Medal for Merit (19461; election to the National Academy of Sciences (19511; Air Force As- sociation Citation of Honor for Outstanding Public Service (19511; Morris Liebmann Award (19531; Oliver Buckley Solic! State Physics Prize (19531; Certificate of Appreciation from the Department of the Army (19531; anal, with Barcleen and Brattain, the Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the transistor (19561. A memoir of Shockley is incomplete without discussion of the transistor invention. This purely scientific endeavor is surrounded by a certain amount of controversy. The im- portance of the transistor to our industry and to our con- tinuing advancement keeps the controversy alive. The three Nobel Prize winners (Barcleen, Brattain, and Shockley) all macle significant contributions to the invention. Discussions of this period of scientific history tend to raise a question of precedence between Bardeen anct Shockley concerning the discovery of minority carrier injection. It is my consid- ered conclusion that the events as ~ have given them are correct. The laboratory group that Shockley recruited was seeking to invent a solic3-state amplifier. There was a pos- sible field effect crevice that ctict not work. A series of ex-

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 319 periments were done by Brattain and Bardeen, very much with the knowledge and approval of Shockley, to find clues as to why the field effect device did not work. Experiments with gold dots evaporated on germanium led Bardeen to suspect that minority carrier injection was a factor in the surface experiments. These experiments led to the Bardeen- Brattain experiment, which was the point contact inven- tion. The point contact device was the first carrier injection amplifier. Shockley's activity in designing experiments to elucidate the physical processes in the point contact device led to the invention of the junction transistor. Both of these activities completely justified his receipt of the Nobel Prize. ~ CONSULTED MANY PEOPLE with intimate knowledge of the activities at Bell Laboratories in the late 1940s. Ken McKay was most helpful with his account of the air of excitement generated during this period of invention and discovery. Professor Fred Seitz filled in a crucial segment of Bill Shockley's life. In addition, Morgan Sparks was very helpful in trying to recapture the early atmosphere. All of these people knew Bill Shockley before I did. I went to Bell Labs when I finished my Ph.D. at Ohio State in 1952, and most of the excitement of invention occurred between 1945 and 1950. NOTES These references give only a small part of the total work that was reported in Europe in the 1930s, but I believe they are adequate to demonstrate the starting point for the advances of the 1940s and 1950s. 1. I. Bardeen and W. Brattain. The transistor- a semiconductor triode. Phys. Rev. 74:~1948~:230. 2. See Shockley (1949,2) . 3. See Shockley (1950,1) . 4. A. H. Wilson. Proc. Roy. Soc. 133A(19311:458. 5. W. Schottky and E. Spenke. Wiss. Veroff ads die Siemens Werken 18(1939) :1-67.

320 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 6. B. Davidov. The rectifying action of semiconductors. Tech. Phys. (U.S.S.R) 5(1938):87-95. 7. H. C. Torrey and C. A. Whitmer. Crystal Rectifiers. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948. The following references supplied much information for this mem- oir: R. Slater. Portraits in Silicon. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987 T. Wasson, ed. Nobel Prize Winners. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1987.

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 321 1936 Electronic energy bands in sodium chloride. Phys. Rev. 50~8~:754- 59. 1938 With {. R. Pierce. A theory of noise for electron multipliers. Proc. IRE 26(3):321-32. 1939 On the surface states associated with a periodic potential. Phys. Rev. 56(4) :317-23. 1946 With I. Bardeen and W. H. Brattain. Investigation of oxidation of copper by use of radioactive Cu tracer. Phys. Rev. 70(1-2):105-6. 1948 With G. L. Pearson. Modulation of conductance of thin films of semi-conductors by surface charges. Phys. Rev. 74(2):232-33. 1949 With G. L. Pearson and l. R. Haynes. Hole injection in germa- nium quantitative studies and filamentary transistors. Bell Syst. Tech. J. 28(3)344-66. The theory of pen junctions in semiconductors and pen junction transistors. Bell Syst. Tech. f. 28 (3) :435-89. With G. L. Pearson and M. Sparks. Current flow across n-p junc- tions. Phys. Rev. 76(1):180. 1950 Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. With l. Bardeen. Energy bands & mobilities in monatomic semicon- ductors. Phys. Rev. 77(3):407-8. With W. T. Read. Dislocation models of crystal grain boundaries. Phys. Rev. 78 (3) :275-89.

322 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS With l. Bardeen. Deformation potentials and mobilities in non-po- lar crystals. Phys. Rev. 80~1~:72-80. With H. T. Williams and C. Kittel. Studies of the propagation veloc- ity of a ferromagnetic domain boundary. Phys. Rev. 80~6~:1090- 94. 1951 With T. R. Haynes. The mobility and life of injected holes and elec- trons in germanium. Phys. Rev. 81 (5) :835-43. With M. Sparks and G. K. Teal. pen junction transistors. Phys. Rev. 83 (1) :151-62. 1952 With W. T. Reed, fir. Statistics of the recombinations of holes and electrons. Phys. Rev. 87 (5) :835-42. Transistor electronics: imperfections, unipolar and analog transis- tors. Proc. IRE40~11~:1289-1313. 1957 With J. T. Last. Statistics of the charge distribution for a localized flaw in a semiconductor. Phys. Rev. 107~2~:392-96. Carrier generation and recombination in pen junctions and pen junction characteristics. Proc. IRE 45 (9) :1228-43. 1958 Electrons, holes, and traps. Proc. IRE 46~6~:973-90. 1961 Problems related to pen junctions in silicon. Solad-State Electron. 2~1~:35- 67. With H. J. Queisser. Detailed balance limit of efficiency of pen junc- tion solar cells. J. Appl. Phys. 32~3~:510-19. 1962 Diffusion and drift of minority carriers in semiconductors for com- parable capture and scattering mean free paths. Phys. Rev. 125~5~:1570- 76.

WILLIAM BRADFORD SHOCKLEY 1964 323 With W. W. Hooper, H. J. Queisser and W. Schroen. Mobile electric charges on insulating oxides with application to oxide covered silicon pen junctions. Surf. Sci. 2:277-87. 1976 The path to the conception of the junction transistor. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 23~7~:597-620.

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Biographic Memoirs: Volume 68 contains the biographies of deceased members of the National Academy of Sciences and bibliographies of their published works. Each biographical essay was written by a member of the Academy familiar with the professional career of the deceased. For historical and bibliographical purposes, these volumes are worth returning to time and again.

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