The Nobel Prize

At 7 AM, Thursday, November 1, 1956, Brattain was at home when he got a phone call from a reporter. He had been awarded the Nobel Prize for the invention of the transistor. He was soon swamped by the media. Later that morning he attended a meeting in the Labs' Murray Hill auditorium. As he walked into the room, everyone spontaneously stood up and began to clap. It brought tears to his eyes. Later he wrote: "What happened there is a matter of record, except possibly the extreme emotion that one feels on receiving the acclamation of one's colleagues and friends of years, knowing full well that one could not have accomplished the work he had done without them, and that it was really only a stroke of luck 9 that it was he and not one of them."

Walter Brattain wrote in 1964 on how importanthe realized their discovery was: "It is of interest to those that ask whether we knew how important this was, that the evening of the first day, when John had come in and suggested the geometry, I told my riding group that night, going home, that I felt that I had that day taken part in the most important experiment I had ever taken part in in my life. And the next evening going home with them I had to swear them to secrecy."

Back to Washington

After he retired from Bell Labs, Brattain moved back to Walla Walla to teach at his alma mater, Whitman College. He worked on biophysics, taught a physics course for non-science majors, and listened to the music being played on campus so loudly thanks to his invention. "The only regret I have about the transistor is its use for rock and roll," he said more than once. He died of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 85 on October 13, 1987.

Task I

Tell about Brattain’s role in the invention of the transistor.

Task II

Comment on his words about his greatest invention.

Task III

Explain the sentence “Walter Brattain had the hands”.

JOHN BARDEEN

(1908 – 1991)

Electrical engineer and physicist John Bardeen remains the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field. Shortly after he was awarded the second prize, a friend congratulated him, "Keep up the good work. Win three times and you get to keep the king."

Bardeen's prize-winning work has been crucial to two fields in electrical engineering. He won his first prize in 1956, along with Walter Brattain and William Shockley, for their research on semiconductors and their invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947. The transistor is quite possibly the single most important and revolutionary technological innovation since World War II. He earned his second prize in 1972 for his work with Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer on the theory of superconductivity. The BCS theory, as it is commonly called, remains the definitive explanation of superconducting phenomena.

His father, Charles Russell Bardeen, was the first graduate of the Johns Hopkins Medical School and founder of the Medical School at the University of Wisconsin. His mother, Althea Harmer, studied oriental art at the Pratt Institute and practiced interior design in Chicago. He was one of five children.

Education

John received his elementary and secondary education in Madison. He attended the University High School in Madison for several years, and graduated from Madison Central High School in 1923. This was followed by a course in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, where he took extra work in mathematics and physics. After being out for a term while working in the engineering department of the Western Electric Company at Chicago, he graduated with a B.Sc. in electrical engineering in 1928. He continued on at Wisconsin as a graduate research assistant in electrical engineering for two years, working on mathematical problems in applied geophysics and on radiation from antennas. It was during this period that he was first introduced to quantum theory by Professor J.H. Van Vleck.

When Professor Leo J. Peters, under whom his research in geophysics was done, took a position at the Gulf Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dr. Bardeen followed him there and worked during the next three years (1930-33) on the development of methods for the interpretation of magnetic and gravitational surveys. This was a stimulating period in which geophysical methods were first being applied to prospecting for oil. [8]

Because he felt his interests were in theoretical science, Dr. Bardeen resigned his position at Gulf in 1933 to take graduate work in mathematical physics at Princeton University. It was here, under the leadership of Professor E.P. Wigner, that he first became interested in solid state physics. Before completing his thesis (on the theory of the work function of metals) he was offered a position as Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He spent the next three years there working with Professors Van Vleck and Bridgman on problems in cohesion and electrical conduction in metals and also did some work on the level density of nuclei. The Ph.D. degree at Princeton was awarded in 1936.

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