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How did William Shockley die?
Prostate cancerWilliam Shockley / Cause of deathShockley died of prostate cancer in 1989 at the age of 79. At the time of his death, he was estranged from most of his friends and family, except his second wife, the former Emmy Lanning (1913–2007).
What did William Shockley discover?
William Shockley headed the team at Bell Telephone Laboratories that studied semiconductors and invented the transistor. The work that he and fellow physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain undertook earned them the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics.
When did William Shockley win the Nobel Prize?
1956The crowning honour – the Nobel Prize for Physics – was bestowed on him in 1956, jointly with his two former colleagues at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain. In 1963 he was selected as recipient of the Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Where is William Shockley buried?
Shockley was killed by the advancing Japanese soldiers. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor seven months later, on October 19, 1945. Shockley, aged 26 at his death, was buried in Floral Memorial Cemetery, Selma, California.
Which country invented semiconductors?
The birth history of semiconductors can be traced back to the invention of the rectifier (AC-DC converter) in 1874. Decades later, Bardeen and Brattain at Bell Laboratories in the US invented the point-contact transistor in 1947, and Shockley invented the junction transistor in 1948.
Who built the first semiconductor?
Karl Ferdinand Braun developed the crystal detector, the first semiconductor device, in 1874.
Who invented transistor Nobel Prize?
The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 In 1956, John Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with William Shockley of Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments and Walter Brattain of Bell Telephone Laboratories "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957?
Lester Bowles PearsonThe Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament has awarded Alfred Nobel's Peace Prize for 1957 to the Canadian Lester Bowles Pearson. As we all know, Lester Pearson was Canada's foreign minister from 1948 to 1957 when, as a result of the election, the Liberal government resigned.
Who invented transistor and got Nobel Prize?
In 1947 John Bardeen and Walter Brattain produced a semiconductor amplifier, which was further developed by William Shockley. The component was named a “transistor”.
Is William Shockley married?
Robin ShockleyWilliam Shockley / Spouse (m. 2007–2013)
What movies has William Shockley been in?
Born WildDr. Quinn, Medicine Woman1993 – 1998The Gundown2011A Country Christmas2013Stolen Women: Captured...1997MistrustWilliam Shockley/Movies and TV shows
Why did Shockley move to California?
Shockley was lured to the Palo Alto area by Stanford's provost, Fred Terman who thought that a solid research institution in the area would benefit Stanford. With a location picked out, Shockley just had to find the people. He wanted tostaff his company with only the best and the brightest.
Who won the Nobel Prize for the invention of the transistor?
John BardeenBell Labs scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention of the transistor, a small semiconductor device that would change the world.
Who invented the transistor?
William ShockleyJohn BardeenWalter Houser BrattainTransistor/Inventors
When was the transistor invented?
1947The transistor, however, is an invention that was conceived long before the time was right. It was invented in 1947, and even several years later, it was considered by a scientific conference to be such an odd accomplishment that it was not included in the documentation.
What year did William Shockley invent the transistor?
The three men invented the point-contact transistor in 1947 and a more effective device, the junction transistor, in 1948. Shockley was deputy director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the Department of Defense in 1954–55.
What did Shockley do in the Navy?
During World War II, he served as director of research for the Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group of the U.S. Navy.
Why did Shockley argue that blacks are inferior to whites?
During the late 1960s Shockley became a figure of some controversy because of his widely debated views on the intellectual differences between races. He held that standardized intelligence tests reflect a genetic factor in intellectual capacity and that tests for IQ (intelligence quotient) reveal that blacks are inferior to whites. He further concluded that the higher rate of reproduction among blacks had a retrogressive effect on evolution.
Work
Amplifying electric signals proved decisive for telephony and radio. First, electron tubes were used for this. To develop smaller and more effective amplifiers, however, it was hoped that semiconductors could be used - materials with properties between those of electrical conductors and insulators.
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How did William Shockley die?
He had few friends and had rarely spoken to his son or daughters for over 20 years. With his wife Emmy by his side, William Shockley died of prostate cancer at age 79 on August 12, 1989 in Stanford, California. He is buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California.
Where did Shockley get his Ph.D.?
In 1932, Shockley earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the California Institute of Technology. After getting his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1936, he joined the technical staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, where he started experimenting with electronic semiconductors .
What did Shockley call the process of creating transistors?
Shockley would later credit what he called “creative-failure methodology” for his team’s invention of the transistor. “A basic truth that the history of the creation of the transistor reveals is that the foundations of transistor electronics were created by making errors and following hunches that failed to give what was expected,” he told reporters.
What did Shockley investigate?
While teaching at Stanford, Shockley began to investigate how genetically inherited intelligence might impact the quality of scientific thinking among different racial groups. Arguing that the tendency of people with lower IQs to reproduce more frequently than those with high IQs threatened the future of the entire population, Shockley’s theories became ever more closely aligned with those of the eugenics movement of the 1910s and 1920s.
Why did Shockley leave the electronics industry?
Unable to compete with Fairchild Semiconductor, Shockley left the electronics industry in 1963 to become a professor of engineering sciences at Stanford University. It would be at Stanford where his focus abruptly turned from physics to controversial theories on human intelligence. He argued that uncontrolled breeding among people with inherently low IQs posed a threat to the future of the entire human race. Over time, his theories became increasingly race-based—and exponentially more controversial.
Why did the eight engineers leave Shockley?
Partly because of Shockley’s increasingly abrasive and unpredictable management style, eight of the brilliant engineers he had hired left Shockley Semiconductor at the end of 1957. Known as the “traitorous eight,” they founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which soon became an early leader in the semiconductor industry.
When did Shockley give his lecture?
The academic world first became most aware of Shockley’s views in January 1965, when the internationally recognized physicist delivered a lecture titled “Population Control or Eugenics” at the Nobel Foundation’s conference on “Genetics and the Future of Man” at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
Who was William Shockley?
Purple Heart (2) William Ralph Shockley (December 4, 1918 – March 31, 1945) was a United States Army soldier and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor —for his actions in World War II .
Where was Shockley born?
He was born December 4, 1918 in Bokoshe, Oklahoma and enlisted in the Army from Selma, California. By March 31, 1945 he was serving as a private first class in Company L, 128th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division. During a Japanese counterattack on that day, on the Villa Verde Trail in Luzon, the Philippines, he voluntarily stayed behind and provided covering fire while the rest of his unit retreated. Shockley was killed by the advancing Japanese soldiers. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor seven months later, on October 19, 1945.
What is the Medal of Honor for Private First Class Shockley?
Private First Class Shockley's official Medal of Honor citation reads: He was in position with his unit on a hill when the enemy, after a concentration of artillery fire, launched a counterattack.
Early Life and Education
Path to The Transistor
- Just after World War II ended in 1945, Shockley returned to Bell Laboratories where he had been chosen to join physicists Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen in directing the company’s new solid-state physics research and development group. Assisted by physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, and electronics expert Hilbert Moore, the group worked on replacing the …
Shockley Semiconductor and Silicon Valley
- Shortly after sharing the Nobel Prize in 1956, Shockley left Bell Labs and moved to Mountain View, California, to pursue his goal of developing the world’s first silicon transistor—the silicon chip. In a one-room Quonset hut at 391 San Antonio Road, he opened the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first high-tech research and development company in what would become know…
The Racial Intelligence Gap Controversy
- While teaching at Stanford, Shockley began to investigate how genetically inherited intelligence might impact the quality of scientific thinking among different racial groups. Arguing that the tendency of people with lower IQs to reproduce more frequently than those with high IQs threatened the future of the entire population, Shockley’s theories became ever more closely alig…
Later Life and Death
- In the wake of the negative reaction to his opinions on genetic racial inferiority, Shockley’s reputation as a scientist was left in shambles and his groundbreaking work in creating the transistor was largely forgotten. Shunning public contact, he secluded himself in his home on the campus of Stanford University. Aside from issuing occasional angry diatribes on his genetics th…
Legacy
- While clearly tarnished by his eugenicist views on race, genetics, and intelligence, Shockley’s legacy as one of the fathers of the modern “Information Age” remains intact. On the 50th anniversary of the invention of the transistor, science writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov called the breakthrough “perhaps the most astonishing revolution of all the scientific revolutions that h…