When Form 8815 Vary 2024

William Bradford Shockley Jr., born on February 13th, 1910, in London, was an American physicist and inventor. Shockley was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs, which included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Together, the three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their research on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect. Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to the emergence of California's Silicon Valley as a center of electronics innovation. In his later years, Shockley became a professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and a proponent of eugenics. He was born to American parents and raised in Palo Alto, California, from the age of three. His father, William Hillman Shockley, was a mining engineer, and his mother, Mary Mae Bradford, graduated from Stanford University and became the first female US deputy mining surveyor. Shockley earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech in 1932 and a PhD from MIT in 1936. His doctoral thesis focused on electronic bands in sodium chloride, a topic suggested by his thesis adviser, John C. Slater. After completing his doctorate, Shockley joined the research group headed by Clinton Davisson at Bell Labs in New Jersey. During this time, he published several influential papers on solid-state physics. During World War II, Shockley became involved in radar research at Bell Labs in Manhattan, New York City. He also worked as a research director at Columbia University, focusing on submarine warfare operations. In 1944, Shockley organized a training program for B-29 bomber pilots to use new radar bomb sites, which earned him the Medal for Merit. In July 1945, Shockley was asked by the War Department to prepare a report on the probable casualties from an invasion of the Japanese mainland. His report influenced...