Biography of william shockley wikipedia

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Professor Fred Seitz filled in a crucial segment of Bill Shockley's life.

Birth of the Transistor

After the war, Shockley returned to Bell Labs, where the mandate was to find solid-state alternatives to cumbersome vacuum-tube amplifiers. I believe that the combination of his strong personality and the rejection of action or support from fellow scientists made him determined to prove that his conclusions were right.

First attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. He was in the Naval Operations Research position from 1942 until 1944. The radar systems used germanium and silicon point contact detectors during World War II. The material quality was greatly advanced in support of this application.

from MIT in 1936. [5]

During World War II, on leave of absence from Bell, he developed operations research techniques for the Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG) and worked as an expert consultant for the Office of the Secretary of War. His work on the effectiveness of B-29 bombing campaigns enabled the nighttime bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in 1945.

He quickly became involved in solid-state physics research. Russell Ohl had a small laboratory at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey, where he "manufactured" point contact detectors for radar purposes during World War II. Ohl had an insatiable curiosity, and, in addition to supplying the radar detectors, he discovered numerous unique properties of the silicon crystals that were available to him at the time.

His mother taught him mathematics, and both parents encouraged his scientific interests. In the process of devising an experimental test of the transistor action, Shockley invented the junction transistor. An arrangement was made whereby a new faculty member in electrical engineering spent an extended period working half time at the Shockley labs. 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.

The laboratory group that Shockley recruited was seeking to invent a solid-state amplifier.

Rev. 78(3):275-89.

I saw an inkling of this second characteristic at an early period but did not take it seriously then.

Early in 1933 William Hansen received an appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rev. 77(3):407-8. His thesis title was "Calculation of Electron Wave Functions in Sodium Chloride Crystals." The solid-state physics he learned at MIT proved to be the basis of his contributions to physics and electronics.