William Shockley

William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American <a href="/facts/Electrical_engineer/YYXW1KLW">electrical engineer</a> and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at <a href="/facts/Bell_Labs/fKP5Gk0H">Bell Labs</a> that included <a href="/facts/John_Bardeen/kbj763Fh">John Bardeen</a> and <a href="/facts/Walter_Houser_Brattain/zjTKLjpA">Walter Houser Brattain</a>. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 <a href="/facts/Nobel_Prize_in_Physics/o6w1nCbr">Nobel Prize in Physics</a> for "their researches on <a href="/facts/Semiconductor/zFf3mGTE">semiconductors</a> and their discovery of the <a href="/facts/Transistor/Bmr8zwL0">transistor</a> effect".
Partly as a result of Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s, California's <a href="/facts/Silicon_Valley/gdot9J7e">Silicon Valley</a> became a hotbed of electronics innovation. He recruited brilliant employees, but quickly alienated them with his autocratic and erratic management; they left and founded major companies in the industry. 
In his later life, while a professor of <a href="/facts/Electrical_engineering/YYXW1KLW">electrical engineering</a> at <a href="/facts/Stanford_University/JEQeF9z2">Stanford University</a> and afterward, Shockley became known as a <a href="/facts/Racism/SfrqGbu8">racist</a> and <a href="/facts/Eugenics/e7w6aSUV">eugenicist</a>.

William Shockley open-in-new

William Shockley