William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American scientist. He led a research team at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Shockley’s efforts to develop and sell a new transistor design helped make California’s Silicon Valley a center for electronics innovation. He hired talented workers, but his strict and unpredictable leadership caused many of them to leave. These employees later started important companies in the electronics industry.

Later in life, while teaching electrical engineering at Stanford University, Shockley became known for holding racist and eugenicist views.

Early life and education

William Bradford Shockley was born on February 13, 1910, in London to American parents. He was raised in Palo Alto, California, starting at the age of three. His father, William Hillman Shockley, was a mining engineer who invested in mining ventures and spoke eight languages. His mother, May Bradford, grew up in the American West, graduated from Stanford University, and became the first female U.S. deputy mining surveyor.

Shockley was homeschooled until he was eight years old because his parents disliked public schools and he had frequent outbursts of anger. He learned some physics at a young age from a neighbor who was a Stanford physics professor. He spent two years at Palo Alto Military Academy, then briefly studied physics at the Los Angeles Coaching School before graduating from Hollywood High School in 1927.

Shockley earned a B.S. from Caltech in 1932 and a Ph.D. from MIT in 1936. The title of his doctoral thesis was Electronic Bands in Sodium Chloride, a topic suggested by his thesis advisor, John C. Slater.

Career and research

William Shockley was among the first people hired by Bell Telephone Laboratories by Mervin Kelly, who became the director of research at the company in 1936. Kelly focused on hiring scientists who studied solid-state physics. Shockley joined a team led by Clinton Davisson in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs leaders believed that semiconductors might replace the vacuum tubes used in Bell's telephone system. Shockley designed ideas using copper-oxide semiconductor materials, but Walter Brattain's attempt to build a working model in 1939 was not successful.

Shockley wrote several important scientific papers about solid-state physics in a publication called Physical Review. In 1938, he received his first patent, called "Electron Discharge Device," for a type of electron multiplier.

During World War II, Shockley's research was paused, and he worked on radar technology in Manhattan, New York City. At Bell Labs, he also helped develop a type of memory called Delay-line memory in 1942. This memory was much cheaper than other memory systems using vacuum tubes and worked just as fast. This technology was later used in the ENIAC computer by 1945.

In May 1942, Shockley left Bell Labs to become a research director at Columbia University's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Group. His work included creating better ways to protect ships from submarines, such as improving how depth charges were used. He often met with military leaders in Washington, D.C., and the Pentagon.

In 1944, Shockley organized training for B-29 bomber pilots to use new radar bomb sights. He also traveled to military bases worldwide to check on the results. For this work, he was awarded the Medal for Merit by Secretary of War Robert Patterson in 1946. In July 1945, the War Department asked Shockley to write a report about the likely number of deaths if the United States invaded Japan. His report influenced the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led to Japan's surrender.

Shockley was the first scientist to suggest using a log-normal distribution to describe how scientific research papers are created.

After the war ended in 1945, Bell Labs formed a group of scientists led by Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan. The team included John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, Gerald Pearson, Robert Gibney, Hilbert Moore, and other technicians. Their goal was to find a solid-state replacement for fragile vacuum tube amplifiers. Early experiments based on Shockley's ideas failed repeatedly. The team struggled until Bardeen proposed a theory about surface states that blocked electrical fields from reaching the semiconductor. They focused on studying these surface states and met daily to discuss their work.

By winter 1946, Bardeen published a paper about surface states in Physical Review. Brattain tested these ideas by shining light on semiconductor surfaces, leading to more research. The team's progress improved when they used electrolytes around the points where semiconductors connected to wires. Moore built a circuit to test different signal frequencies. Pearson, following Shockley's suggestion, applied voltage to a droplet of glycol borate across a p–n junction, which showed signs of power amplification.

Bell Labs lawyers later found that Shockley's field effect idea had been described in a patent filed in 1925 by Julius Lilienfeld. Although the patent was not practical, Bell Labs used it as a basis for patent applications. Three of these patents covered electrolyte-based transistors, with Bardeen, Gibney, and Brattain as inventors. Shockley was not listed on these patents, which upset him. He tried to claim sole credit for the patents but failed.

Angered by being excluded, Shockley secretly worked on a new type of transistor using junctions instead of point contacts. He believed this design would be more useful for manufacturing. He also wanted to improve the explanation for how transistors worked and thought about minority carrier injection.

In February 1948, John N. Shive built a point contact transistor with bronze contacts on a thin piece of germanium. This showed that holes could move through the material's interior, not just its surface. Shive's work inspired Shockley to create a junction transistor. A few months later, Shockley invented a more durable transistor with a "sandwich" structure. This design became the most common type of transistor until the 1960s and evolved into the bipolar junction transistor. Shockley described the team's work as a mix of cooperation and competition. He kept some of his research private until Shive's 1948 discovery forced him to share it. A working model of the "sandwich" transistor was tested on April 7, 1949.

Meanwhile, Shockley wrote a book titled Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors, published in 1950. The book explained key ideas about electron movement in solids, including drift and diffusion, and introduced the Shockley diode equation. This work became a standard reference for scientists developing new transistor technologies.

In 1951, the bipolar junction transistor was announced at a press conference on July 4. The invention received widespread attention, which made Shockley famous, though Bardeen and Brattain were upset. Bell Labs always credited all three inventors as a team. However, Shockley later caused tension by blocking Bardeen and Brattain from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen left Bell Labs in 1951 to study superconductivity, while Brattain was assigned to another group. Neither worked on transistor development after the first year.

Shockley left Bell Labs around 1953 and joined Caltech. In 1956, he started a company called Shockley Semiconductor.

Racist and eugenicist views

After leaving his position as Director of Shockley Semiconductor in April 1960, William Shockley joined Stanford University. In 1963, he became the Alexander M. Poniatoff Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Stanford. He held this position until he retired in 1975.

In the last 20 years of his life, Shockley became known for his strong opinions about race and human intelligence. He did not have a degree in genetics but became interested in heredity and intelligence. According to his biographer, Bo Lojek, two events influenced this interest. The first was a 1963 news story about a 17-year-old Black boy who was hired to throw acid into the eyes of a white shopkeeper. Soon after, Shockley received an article by J. P. Guilford, which discussed a new model for understanding intelligence. A Los Angeles Times obituary described how Shockley changed from a respected physicist to someone who studied genetics, even though his views caused controversy and protests. He believed his work on intelligence was the most important part of his career. He argued that higher reproduction rates among people with lower average intelligence could harm society. He also claimed that Black people were genetically and intellectually less capable than white people.

Joel Shurkin, Shockley’s biographer, noted that Shockley had little contact with Black people during his life in the racially divided United States. In debates, Shockley said he believed the intellectual and social challenges faced by Black people were caused by heredity and race, not by environmental factors. He received funding from the Pioneer Fund, a group that supported eugenics research. One of its founders, Wickliffe Draper, gave money to Shockley. Shockley proposed paying people with IQs below 100 to undergo voluntary sterilization, offering $1,000 for each point below 100. This idea led the University of Leeds to cancel an honorary degree offer to him. Roger Pearson, a far-right activist, defended Shockley in a book they co-authored. In 1973, Edgar G. Epps, a professor, said Shockley’s ideas could be seen as racist. The Southern Poverty Law Center called Shockley a white nationalist who did not provide evidence for his theories. Science writer Angela Saini described him as a "notorious racist."

Shockley claimed he was not a racist and said his work did not support white supremacy. He argued that East Asians and Jews performed better than whites intellectually. In 1973, Epps said that even if Shockley was not an Aryan supremacist, his belief in the superiority of other groups was still racist.

Shockley’s views on eugenics caused protests. In 1968, the science society Sigma Xi canceled a speaking event in Brooklyn after fearing violence. In 1981, Shockley sued the Atlanta Constitution after a writer compared his sterilization plan to Nazi experiments. He won the case but received only $1 in damages. His biographer, Joel Shurkin, said his reputation was not valuable by that time. Shockley recorded and sent transcripts of his phone calls with reporters. He also kept detailed records of his life, including laundry lists.

In 1982, Shockley ran for the Republican Senate nomination in California. He focused on opposing the "dysgenic threat" he claimed African-Americans and others posed. He received 0.37% of the vote and came in eighth place. Shurkin said his racism made people avoid him, and those who supported him harmed his reputation.

The Foundation for Research and Education on Eugenics and Dysgenics (FREED) was created in 1970 to support Shockley’s work. He was the foundation’s president, and R. Travis Osborne was a member. FREED published a newsletter and research papers at Stanford University. Its mission was to study human population and quality issues.

From 1969 to 1976, the Pioneer Fund gave about $2.5 million (adjusted for inflation in 2023) to support Shockley’s research. This money went to Stanford University and FREED. Through FREED, Shockley promoted his "Voluntary Sterilization Bonus Plan," which aimed to pay low-income women for sterilization procedures. In 1970, Shockley listed former Alaska Senator Ernest Gruening as a director of FREED.

Personal life

At age 23, while still a student, Shockley married Jean Bailey in August 1933. The couple had two sons and a daughter. They separated in 1953. In 1955, Shockley married Emily Lanning, a psychiatric nurse. She helped him with some of his theories. One of his sons earned a PhD at Stanford University, and his daughter graduated from Radcliffe College. However, Shockley believed his children "represent a very significant regression … my first wife – their mother – had not as high an academic-achievement standing as I had."

Shockley was an accomplished rock climber. He often climbed in the Shawangunks in the Hudson River Valley. His 1953 climbing route, called "Shockley's Ceiling," is one of the classic routes in the area. Mountain Project, a web-based climbing guidebook, reports that the route's name was changed to "The Ceiling" because of Shockley's eugenics controversies. A 1996 guidebook notes that the original group on this route avoided the ceiling in question. The guidebook lists this variation as "Shockley's Without." He was popular as a speaker, lecturer, and amateur magician. He once "magically" produced a bouquet of roses at the end of his speech before the American Physical Society.

In his early years, Shockley was known for clever pranks. He had a longtime hobby of raising ant colonies.

Shockley donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank founded by Robert Klark Graham. The bank, called by the media the "Nobel Prize sperm bank," claimed to have three Nobel Prize-winning donors. However, Shockley was the only one to publicly acknowledge his involvement. His controversial views brought the Repository for Germinal Choice some notoriety and may have discouraged other Nobel Prize winners from donating sperm.

Shockley was unhappy in his life and was often psychologically and sometimes physically abusive toward his sons. On one occasion, he reportedly played Russian roulette on himself as part of a suicide attempt.

Shockley died of prostate cancer on August 12, 1989, in Stanford, California, at the age of 79. At the time of his death, he was estranged from most of his friends and family, except for his second wife. His children learned of his death by reading his obituary in the newspaper. He is buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California.

Patents

Shockley was awarded more than 90 U.S. patents. Some important ones include:

• US 2502488 Semiconductor Amplifier. April 4, 1950; his first patent related to transistors.
• US 2569347 Circuit element utilizing semiconductive material. September 25, 1951; the earliest patent application he submitted in 1948, which was granted in 1951.
• US 2655609 Bistable Circuits. October 13, 1953; used in computers.
• US 2787564 Forming Semiconductive Devices by Ionic Bombardment. April 2, 1957; a method for adding impurities to materials using ions.
• US 3031275 Process for Growing Single Crystals. April 24, 1962; improved methods for creating basic materials.
• US 3053635 Method of Growing Silicon Carbide Crystals. September 11, 1962; studying other types of semiconductors.

Publications

• Johnson, R. P. and Shockley, W. (March 15, 1936). "An Electron Microscope for Filaments: Emission and Adsorption by Tungsten Single Crystals." Published in Physical Review, Volume 49, Issue 6, pages 436–440. American Physical Society (APS). Bibcode: 1936PhRv…49..436J. DOI: 10.1103/physrev.49.436. ISSN 0031-899X.
• Slater, J. C. and Shockley, W. (October 15, 1936). "Optical Absorption by the Alkali Halides." Published in Physical Review, Volume 50, Issue 8, pages 705–719. American Physical Society (APS). Bibcode: 1936PhRv…50..705S. DOI: 10.1103/physrev.50.705. ISSN 0031-899X.
• Shockley, William (October 15, 1936). "Electronic Energy Bands in Sodium Chloride." Published in Physical Review, Volume 50, Issue 8, pages 754–759. American Physical Society (APS). Bibcode: 1936PhRv…50..754S. DOI: 10.1103/physrev.50.754. ISSN 0031-899X.
• Shockley, W. (October 15, 1937). "The Empty Lattice Test of the Cellular Method in Solids." Published in Physical Review, Volume 52, Issue 8, pages 866–872. American Physical Society (APS). Bibcode: 1937PhRv…52..866S. DOI: 10.1103/physrev.52.866. ISSN 0031-899X.
• Shockley, William (August 15, 1939). "On the Surface States Associated with a Periodic Potential." Published in Physical Review, Volume 56, Issue 4, pages 317–323. American Physical Society (APS). Bibcode: 1939PhRv…56..317S. DOI: 10.1103/physrev.56.317. ISSN 0031-899X.
• Steigman, J.; Shockley, W.; and Nix, F. C. (July 1, 1939). "The Self-Diffusion of Copper." Published in Physical Review, Volume 56, Issue 1, pages 13–21. American Physical Society (APS). Bibcode: 1939PhRv…56…13S. DOI: 10.1103/physrev.56.13. ISSN 0031-899X.

• Shockley, W. (1949). "The Theory of p-n Junctions in Semiconductors and p-n Junction Transistors." Published in Bell System Technical Journal, Volume 28, Issue 3, pages 435–489. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Bibcode: 1949BSTJ…28..435S. DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1949.tb00352.x. ISSN 0005-8580.
• Shockley, W. (1949). "The Theory of p-n Junctions in Semiconductors and p-n Junction Transistors." Published in Bell System Technical Journal, Volume 28, Issue 3, pages 435–489. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Bibcode: 1949BSTJ…28..435S. DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1949.tb00352.x. ISSN 0005-8580.
• Shockley, W. (1950). "The Theory of p-n Junctions in Semiconductors and p-n Junction Transistors." Published in Bell System Technical Journal, Volume 29, Issue 4, pages 474–503. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Bibcode: 1950BSTJ…29..474S. DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1950.tb00456.x. ISSN 0005-8580.

• Shockley, William – Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors with Applications to Transistor Electronics. Published by Krieger (1956). ISBN 0-88275-382-7.
• Shockley, William and Gong, Walter A – Mechanics. Published by Charles E. Merrill, Inc. (1966).
• Shockley, William and Pearson, Roger – *Shockley on Eugenics and Race: