Shockley, William B.

Shockley, William B. (Bradford) (1910–89) physicist; born in London, England (of American parents). He worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories (1936–42), then performed antisubmarine research at Columbia University (1942–44) and the War Department (1944–45). Returning to Bell (1945–54), he collaborated with J. Bardeen and W. Brattain to invent the transistor, for which the three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics. Shockley worked at Beckmann Instruments (1955–58), then founded Shockley Transistor (1958–63) before joining Stanford (1963–74). There he developed his controversial opinions on the relationship of intelligence to the human races, theories he considered more important than his contributions to physics.