Brattain, Walter H.

Brattain, Walter H. (Houser)

(1902–87) physicist; born in Amoy, China, to American teachers. He was a researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories (1929–67), and a visiting professor at Whitman College (1962–72). With J. Bardeen and W. B. Shockley, he developed the point-contact transistor (1947), using a thin germanium crystal. The three men shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for their revolutionary contribution to electronics.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.