The original Shockley building at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California, was a produce market in 2006.

Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the primary lab of the Shockley Transistor Company, was the first company to work on silicon semiconductor devices in what came to be known as Silicon Valley. It was purchased by Clevite in 1960, and officially closed shortly after being sold to ITT in 1968. Engineers leaving the company stayed in the area; engineers leaving these companies did the same, and soon an entire industry built up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Shockley's return to California[link]

William Shockley had studied his undergraduate degree at Caltech and moved east to complete his PhD at MIT. He graduated in 1936 and immediately started work at Bell Labs. Through the 1930s and 40s he worked on electron devices, and increasingly with semiconductor materials. This led to the 1947 creation of the first transistor, in partnership with John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and others. Through the early 1950s a series of events led to Shockley becoming increasingly upset with Bell's management, and especially what he saw as a slighting when Bell promoted Bardeen and Brattain's names ahead of his own on the transistor's patent. However, others that worked with him suggested the reason for these issues was Shockley's abrasive management style, and it was this reason that he was constantly passed over for promotion within the company. These issues came to a head in 1953 and he took a sabbatical and returned to Caltech as a visiting professor.

Here Shockley struck up a friendship with Arnold Orville Beckman, who had invented the pH meter in 1934. By this time Shockley had become convinced that the natural capabilities of silicon meant it would eventually replace germanium as the primary material for transistor construction. Texas Instruments had recently started production of silicon transistors (in 1954), and Shockley thought he could do one better. Beckman agreed to back Shockley's efforts in this area, under the umbrella of his company, Beckman Instruments. However, Shockley's mother was aging and often ill, and he decided to live closer to her house in Palo Alto.

The Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory opened for business in a small commercial lot in nearby Mountain View in 1956. Initially he tried to hire some of his former workers from Bell Labs, but none of them wanted to leave the east coast, then the center of most high-tech research. Instead, he assembled a team of young scientists and engineers and set about designing a new type of crystal-growth system that could produce single-crystal silicon boules, at that time a difficult prospect given silicon's high melting point.

Shockley diodes[link]

While work on the transistors continued, Shockley hit upon the idea of using a four-layer device (transistors are three) that would have the novel quality of locking into the "on" or "off" state with no further control inputs. Similar circuits required several transistors, typically three, so for large switching networks the new diodes would greatly reduce complexity.^[1][2] The four-layer diode is now called the Shockley diode.

Shockley became convinced that the new device would be just as important as the transistor, and kept the entire project secret, even within the company. This led to increasingly paranoid behavior; in one famed incident he was convinced that a secretary's cut finger was a plot to injure him and ordered lie detector tests on everyone in the company. This was combined with Shockley's vacillating management of the projects; some times he felt that getting the basic transistors into immediate production was paramount, and would de-emphasize the Shockley diode project in order to make the "perfect" production system. This upset many of the employees, and mini-rebellions became commonplace.^[3]

Traitorous eight[link]

Eventually a group of the youngest employees went over Shockley's head to Arnold Beckman, demanding that someone be brought in to replace Shockley in the management role. Beckman initially appeared to agree with their demands, but over time a series of decisions where Beckman sided with Shockley made it clear that nothing had actually changed. Fed up, the group turned to Sherman Fairchild's Fairchild Camera and Instrument, an Eastern U.S. company with considerable military contracts. In 1957, Fairchild Semiconductor was started with plans on making silicon transistors. Shockley denoted them the "traitorous eight":^[4][5]Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts.

The eight would later leave Fairchild to start companies of their own, among them Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and others. Over a period of 20 years, 65 different companies were started by 1st or 2nd generation teams that traced their origins in the valley to Shockley Semiconductor.

Shockley never managed to make the four-layer diode a commercial success, in spite of eventually working out the technical details and entering production in the 1960s. The introduction of integrated circuits allowed the multiple transistors needed to produce a switch to be placed on a single "chip", thereby nullifying the parts-count advantage of Shockley's design. However, the company did have a number of other successful projects, including the first strong theoretical study of solar cells, developing the seminal Shockley-Queisser limit that places an upper limit of 30% efficiency on basic silicon solar cells.

See also[link]

• Thyristor - a concept first proposed by William Shockley

References[link]

External links[link]

• Interview with Adolf Goetzberger a Shockley alumnus hired after mass resignations from Shockley Semiconductor.

Coordinates: 37°24′18″N 122°06′39″W / 37.4049544°N 122.1109664°W / 37.4049544; -122.1109664

Robert Noyce
Born	(1927-12-12)December 12, 1927 Burlington, Iowa
Died	June 3, 1990(1990-06-03) (aged 62) Austin, Texas
Alma mater	Grinnell College Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Occupation	Co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel
Spouse	Elizabeth Bottomley Ann Bowers
Children	William B. Noyce Pendred Noyce Priscilla Noyce Margaret Noyce
Parents	Ralph Brewster Noyce Harriet May Norton

Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He is also credited (along with Jack Kilby) with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip which fueled the personal computer revolution and gave Silicon Valley its name.^{[1][nb 1]}

Biography[link]

Active all his life, Noyce enjoyed reading Hemingway, flying his own airplane, hang gliding, and scuba diving. Noyce believed that microelectronics would continue to advance in complexity and sophistication well beyond its current state, leading to the question of what use society would make of the technology. In his last interview, Noyce was asked what he would do if he were "emperor" of the United States. He said that he would, among other things, "…make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level."^[2]

Early life[link]

Noyce was born on December 12, 1927, in Burlington, Iowa.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} He was the third of four sons^[5] of the Rev. Ralph Brewster Noyce.^[8] His father was a 1915 graduate of Doane College, a 1920 graduate of Oberlin College, and a 1923 graduate of Chicago Theological Seminary. He was also nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship.^[9] The Reverend Noyce was a Congregational clergyman and the associate superintendent of the Iowa Conference of Congregational Churches in the 1930s and 1940s.

His mother, Harriet May Norton, a 1921 graduate of Oberlin College, was the daughter of the Rev. Milton J. Norton, a Congregational clergyman, and Louise Hill. She had dreamed of becoming a missionary prior to her marriage.^[10] She has been described as an intelligent woman with a commanding will.^[11]

Bob had three siblings: Donald Sterling Noyce, Gaylord Brewster Noyce and Ralph Harold Noyce.^[5][12]

His earliest childhood memory involved beating his father at ping pong and feeling absolutely devastated when his mother's reaction to this thrilling news was a distracted "Wasn't that nice of Daddy to let you win?" Even at the age of five, Noyce was offended by the notion of intentionally losing at anything. "That's not the game," he sulked to his mother. "If you're going to play, play to win!"^[12]

In the summer of 1940, when he was 12, he built a boy-sized aircraft with his brother, which they used to fly from the roof of the Grinnell College stables. Later he built a radio from scratch and motorized his sled by welding a propeller and an engine from an old washing machine to the back of it.^[13]

Education[link]

He grew up in Grinnell, Iowa and attended the local schools. He exhibited a talent for mathematics and science while in high school and took the Grinnell College freshman physics course in his senior year. He graduated from Grinnell High School in 1945 and entered Grinnell College in the fall of that year. He was the star diver on the 1947 Midwest Conference Championship swim team.^[11] While at Grinnell College, Noyce sang, played the oboe and acted. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in physics and mathematics from Grinnell College in 1949. He also received a signal honor from his classmates: the Brown Derby Prize, which recognized "the senior man who earned the best grades with the least amount of work". He received his doctorate in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953.

While an undergraduate, Noyce attended a physics course of the professor Grant Gale and was fascinated by the physics. Gale got hold of two of the very first transistors ever to come out of Bell Labs and showed them off to his class and Noyce was hooked.^[11][14][15] Grant Gale suggested that he apply to the doctoral program in physics at MIT, which he did.^[16] He had a mind so quick that his graduate school friends called him "Rapid Robert".^[17]

Career[link]

After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953, he took his first job as a research engineer at the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He left in 1956 for the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California.

He joined William Shockley at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory,^[18] a division of Beckman Instruments, but left with the "traitorous eight"^[19] in 1957, upon having issues with respect to the quality of its management, and co-founded the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. According to Sherman Fairchild, Noyce's impassioned presentation of his vision was the reason Fairchild had agreed to create the semiconductor division for the traitorous eight.^[19]

Noyce and Gordon E. Moore founded Intel in 1968 when they left Fairchild Semiconductor.^[17][20] Arthur Rock, the chairman of Intel's board and a major investor in the company said that for Intel to succeed, Intel needed Noyce, Moore and Andrew Grove. And it needed them in that order. Noyce: the visionary, born to inspire; Moore: the virtuoso of technology; and Grove: the technologist turned management scientist.^[21] The relaxed culture that Noyce brought to Intel was a carry-over from his style at Fairchild Semiconductor. He treated employees as family, rewarding and encouraging teamwork. His follow-your-bliss management style set the tone for many Valley success stories. Noyce's management style could be called a "roll up your sleeves" style. He shunned fancy corporate cars, reserved parking spaces, private jets, offices, and furnishings in favor of a less-structured, relaxed working environment in which everyone contributed and no one benefited from lavish benefits. By declining the usual executive perks he stood as a model for future generations of Intel CEOs. At Intel, he oversaw Ted Hoff's invention of the microprocessor, which was his second revolution.^[22][23]

Marriage and family[link]

In 1953, he married Elizabeth "Betty" Bottomley^[24] She was born on October 7, 1930 in Auburn, Massachusetts, the daughter of Frank Bottomley and Helen McLaren. She died on September 18, 1996 at Bremen, Lincoln County, Maine. She was a 1951 graduate of Tufts University. She moved to Maine in 1976 after her marriage ended and as a result of the settlement, she received half of the couple's assets. She became Maine's leading philanthropist and art collector. They had four children together.

On November 27, 1974, Noyce married Ann Schmeltz Bowers. Bowers, a 1959 graduate of Cornell University,^[25] also received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Santa Clara, where she was a Trustee for nearly 20 years. She was the first Director of Personnel for Intel Corporation and the first Vice President of Human Resources for Apple Inc. She currently serves as Chair of the Board and the founding trustee of the Noyce Foundation.^[26]

Death[link]

Noyce suffered a heart attack at home on June 3, 1990, and later died at the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas.^[27]

Awards and honors[link]

In July 1959, he filed for U.S. Patent 2,981,877 "Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure", a type of integrated circuit. This independent effort was recorded only a few months after the key findings of inventor Jack Kilby. For his co-invention of the integrated circuit and its world-transforming impact, three presidents of the United States honored him.

Noyce was a holder of many honors and awards. President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Technology in 1987.^[28] Two years later, he was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame sponsored by Junior Achievement,^[29] during a black tie ceremony keynoted by President George H. W. Bush.^[30] In 1990 Noyce â€“ along with, among others, Jack Kilby and transistor inventor John Bardeen â€“ received a "Lifetime Achievement Medal" during the bicentennial celebration of the Patent Act.

Noyce received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1966.^[31] He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1978 "for his contributions to the silicon integrated circuit, a cornerstone of modern electronics."^[32][33] In 1979, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. Noyce was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980.^[34] The National Academy of Engineering awarded him its 1989 Charles Stark Draper Prize.^[35]

The science building at his alma mater, Grinnell College, is named after him.

On December 12, 2011, Noyce was honored with a Google Doodle celebrating the 84th anniversary of his birth.^[36]

Legacy[link]

The Noyce Foundation was founded in 1991 by his family. The foundation is dedicated to improving public education in mathematics and science in grades K-12.^[26]

Patents[link]

Noyce was granted 15 patents.

Notes[link]

Citations[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Robert Noyce

• Noyce biography on PBS.org
• Noyce biography on IdeaFinder.com
• Noyce Foundation website
• Guide to the Robert Noyce Papers at Stanford University
• Obituary of Donald Noyce, brother of Robert Noyce.
• Obituary of Pro. Rev. Gaylord Brewster Noyce, brother of Robert Noyce. He is also among the seven Freedom Riders of 1961, and a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Herbert F. Mataré (1950)

Herbert Franz Mataré (22 September 1912 – 2 September 2011^[1]) was a German physicist. The focus of his research was the field of semiconductor research. His best-known work is the first functional "European" transistor, which he developed and patented together with Heinrich Welker in the vicinity of Paris in 1948, at the same time and independently from the Bell Labs engineers. The final 20 years of his life Mataré split time between his homes in Hückelhoven, Germany and Malibu, California.. Born in Aachen, he is the nephew of the sculptor Ewald Mataré (1887–1965) and father of architect Vitus Mataré (1955.)

Biography[link]

Mataré completed his studies in mathematics, chemistry, electrochemistry, nuclear physics and solid-state physics at the Technical University of Aachen with degree "Diplom-Ingenieur" in Applied Physics. In addition, he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Geneva.^[2]

In 1939 he joined the Telefunken research laboratory in Berlin. At that time it became obvious that the miniaturization of vacuum tubes had met a technical limit and that alternative solutions had to be sought using solid state circuits and principles of the previous transistor inventions of Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, Oskar Heil, Walter Schottky and Robert Wichard Pohl.

Because of the massive air raids on Berlin in 1943, the Telefunken laboratory were moved to the Cisterian abbey in Lubiąż (Leubus) Silesia, where Mataré focused on the improvement of the cm-wave (SHF) receiver sensitivity.

In 1944, as the Russian army closed in, the site and most of its equipment were abandoned and the operation was transferred to Thuringia. Later Mataré taught physics and mathematics in Wabern near Kassel and gave lectures at the Aachen university, and he was invited to build a semiconductor diode plant for Compagnie des Freins & Signaux Westinghouse in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris.

Herbert F. Mataré (1990)

Academic degrees[link]

Important Work[link]

At the same time as the American researchers and independently, the German researchers Mataré and Heinrich Welker developed the first operational "French transistor" at Compagnie des Freins & Signaux Westinghouse in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris during the years 1945 to 1948. They filed their first transistor patent application on August 13, 1948.^[3][4] On 18 May 1949, this European invention coined as the "Le Transistron" was presented to the public.

In 1951/1952, Mataré founded Intermetall in Düsseldorf, the world's first company, which offered diodes and transistors.^[2]

Awards (selection)[link]

• â€?Life Fellow IEEE“
• â€?Member emeritus“ New York Academy of Sciences
• Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor, Eduard Rhein Foundation, 2008.^[5][6]

External links[link]

• Herbert Mataré in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Peter Salomon: â€?Deutsche Halbleiter-Technik vor 1945 ?“
• John Markoff (February 24, 2003). "Herbert F. Mataré. An inventor of the transistor has his moment". New York Times. http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2003/Transistor-Matare-Inventor24feb03.htm. 
• Michael Riordan (November 2005). "How Europe Missed The Transistor". IEEE Spectrum 42 (11): 52–57. DOI:10.1109/MSPEC.2005.1526906. http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/2155. 
• Armand van Dormael: The â€?french“ transistor. Last access: December 12, 2008
• Konrad Lischka (April 17, 2008). 60 JAHRE EURO-TRANSISTOR: Deutschlands vergessene Chip-Großväter. SPIEGEL Online. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,547455,00.html. 

Literature[link]

• H. F. Mataré (April 2001). "Erlebnisse eines deutschen Physikers und Ingenieurs von 1912 bis Ende des Jahrhunderts". Der Fernmelde-Ingenieur 4/01, 5/01 (in one volume): 1–109. ISSN 0015-010X. 
• H. F. Mataré (September 2002). "Von der Radartechnik zur modernen Kommunikationstechnik". Tele-Kommunikation aktuell: TKA 9/02, 10/02 (in one volume): 1–59. ISSN 1619-2036. 
• Kai Handel (1999-06-29). "Anfänge der Halbleiterforschung und -entwicklung. Dargestellt an den Biographien von vier deutschen Halbleiterpionieren.". PhD thesis RWTH Aachen. http://darwin.bth.rwth-aachen.de/opus3/volltexte/2008/2517/pdf/Handel_Kai.pdf. 
• Armand Van Dormael (2009). "Biographies: Herbert F. Mataré". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31 (3): 68–73. DOI:10.1109/MAHC.2009.38. 

Patents[link]

The following list can only present a part of the more than 80 patents which Mataré has filed.

• US 2552052  H. F. Mataré: â€?Push-pull converter of the crystal type for ultra-short waves“ filed in France on May 23, 1947
• FR 1010427  H. F. Mataré/H. Welker/Westinghouse: â€?Nouveau système cristallin à plusieurs électrodes réalisant des effects de relais électroniques“ filed on August 13, 1948
• US 2673948  H. F. Mataré/H. Welker/Westinghouse: â€?Crystal device for controlling electric currents by means of a solid semiconductor“ french priority date August 13, 1948

References[link]

1. ^ The Wikimedia Support Team has a scan of Mataré's obituary under Ticket:2011092210019198
2. ^ ^{a b} Armand Van Dormael:The "French" transistor.Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Conference on the History of Electronics, Bletchley Park, June 2004.
3. ^ FR 1010427  H. F. Mataré / H. Welker / Westinghouse: "Nouveau sytème cristallin à plusieurs électrodes réalisant des relais de effects électroniques" filed on August 13, 1948
4. ^ US 2673948  H. F. Mataré / H. Welker / Westinghouse, "Crystal device for controlling electric currents by means of a solid semiconductor" French priority August 13, 1948
5. ^ DIE WELT ONLINE â€?Der deutsche Erfinder des Transistors“ November 14, 2008 (2008-11-14)
6. ^ "The Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor Recipients". Eduard Rhein Foundation. http://www.eduard-rhein-stiftung.de/html/Ehrenring_e.html. Retrieved February 5, 2011 (2011-02-05). 

John Bardeen

John Bardeen FRS^[1] (May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.

The transistor revolutionized the electronics industry, allowing the Information Age to occur, and made possible the development of almost every modern electronic device, from telephones to computers to missiles. Bardeen's developments in superconductivity, which won him his second Nobel, are used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

In 1990, John Bardeen appeared on LIFE Magazine's list of "100 Most Influential Americans of the Century."^[2]

Early life[link]

John Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin on May 23, 1908.^[3] He was the second son of Dr. Charles Russell Bardeen and Althea Harmer Bardeen. He was one of five children. His father, Charles Bardeen, was Professor of Anatomy and the first Dean of the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Althea Bardeen, before marrying, had taught at the Dewey Laboratory School and run an interior decorating business; after marriage she was an active figure in the art world.

Bardeen's talent for mathematics was recognized early. His seventh grade mathematics teacher encouraged Bardeen in pursuing advanced work, and years later, Bardeen credited him for "first exciting [his] interest in mathematics."

Althea Bardeen became seriously ill with cancer when John was 12 years old. Charles Bardeen downplayed the seriousness of her illness so that it would not affect his children. John was stunned when his mother died.

Bardeen attended the University High School at Madison for several years, but graduated from Madison Central High School in 1923.^[3] He graduated from high school at age fifteen, even though he could have graduated several years earlier. His graduation was postponed due to taking additional courses at another high school and also partly because of his mother's death. He entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1923. While in college he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity. He raised the needed membership fees partly by playing billiards. He was initiated as a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. He chose engineering because he didn't want to be an academic like his father and also because it is mathematical. He also felt that engineering had good job prospects.^[4]

Bardeen received his B.S. in electrical engineering in 1928 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[5] He graduated in 1928 despite taking a year off during his degree to work in Chicago.^[6] He had taken all the graduate courses in physics and mathematics that had interested him, and, in fact, graduated in five years, one more than usual; this allowed him time to also complete a Master's thesis, supervised by Leo J. Peters. He received his M.S. in electrical engineering in 1929 from Wisconsin.^[5] His mentors in mathematics were Warren Weaver and Edward Van Vleck. His primary physics mentor was John Hasbrouck van Vleck, but he was also much influenced by visiting scholars such as Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and Arnold Sommerfeld.

Bardeen was unsuccessful in his 1929 application to Trinity College, Cambridge, for one of their coveted fellowships.^[6]

Bardeen stayed on for some time at Wisconsin furthering his studies, but he eventually went to work for Gulf Research Laboratories, the research arm of the Gulf Oil Company, based in Pittsburgh.^[2] From 1930 to 1933, Bardeen worked there on the development of methods for the interpretation of magnetic and gravitational surveys.^[3] He worked as a geophysicist. After the work failed to keep his interest, he applied and was accepted to the graduate program in mathematics at Princeton University.^[4]

Bardeen studied both mathematics and physics as a graduate student, ending up writing his thesis on a problem in solid-state physics, under Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner. Before completing his thesis, he was offered a position as Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University in 1935. He spent the next three years there, from 1935 to 1938, working with Nobel laureate physicist John Hasbrouck van Vleck and to-be laureate Percy Williams Bridgman on problems in cohesion and electrical conduction in metals, and also did some work on level density of nuclei. He received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton University in 1936.^[3]

Academic career[link]

In the fall of 1938, Bardeen started in his new role as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.

In 1941, the world was embroiled in war, and Bardeen was convinced by his colleagues to take a leave of absence and work for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. He would stay there for four years. In 1943 he was invited to join the Manhattan Project, but he declined, since he did not want to uproot his family. He received the Meritorious Civilian Service Award for his service at the NOL.

After the end of World War II, Bardeen started seeking a return to academia, but the University of Minnesota did not realize the importance of the young field of solid-state physics. They offered him only a small raise. Bardeen's expertise in solid-state physics made him invaluable to Bell Labs, which was just starting a solid-state division. Remembering the lack of support he had received previously from the university to pursue his research, he decided to take a lucrative offer from Bell Labs in 1945.

Bell Labs[link]

John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs, 1948.

In October 1945, John Bardeen began work at Bell Labs. Bardeen was a member of a Solid State Physics Group, led by William Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan. Other personnel working in the group were Walter Brattain, physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, electronics expert Hilbert Moore and several technicians. He moved his family to Summit, New Jersey.^[7] John Bardeen had met William Shockley when they were both in school in Massachusetts. He rekindled his friendship with Walter Brattain. Bardeen knew Walter Brattain from his graduate school days at Princeton. He had previously met Brattain through Brattain's brother, Bob Brattain. Bob Brattain was also a Princeton graduate student. Over the years the friendship of Bardeen and Brattain grew, both in the lab, where Brattain put together the experiments and Bardeen wove theories to explain the results and also on the golf course where they spent time on the weekends.

The assignment of the group was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Their first attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. These experiments mysteriously failed every time in all sorts of configurations and materials. The group was at a standstill until Bardeen suggested a theory that invoked surface states that prevented the field from penetrating the semiconductor. The group changed its focus to study these surface states, and they met almost daily to discuss the work. The rapport of the group was excellent, and ideas were freely exchanged.^[8] By the winter of 1946 they had enough results that Bardeen submitted a paper on the surface states to Physical Review. Brattain started experiments to study the surface states through observations made while shining a bright light on the semiconductor's surface. This led to several more papers (one of them co-authored with Shockley), which estimated the density of the surface states to be more than enough to account for their failed experiments. The pace of the work picked up significantly when they started to surround point contacts between the semiconductor and the conducting wires with electrolytes. Moore built a circuit that allowed them to vary the frequency of the input signal easily and suggested that they use glycol borate (gu), a viscous chemical that didn't evaporate. Finally they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley,^[9] put a voltage on a droplet of gu placed across a P-N junction.

The invention of the transistor[link]

A stylized replica of the first transistor invented at Bell Labs on December 23, 1947.

In the spring of 1947, William Shockley set Brattain and Bardeen to a task to explain why an amplifier he had devised didn't work. At the heart of the amplifier was a crystal of silicon. They would switch to germanium after some months. To figure out what was going on, Bardeen had to remember some of the quantum mechanics research that he had done on semiconductors while he was completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Bardeen had also come up with some new theories himself. By observing Brattain's experiments, Bardeen realized that everyone had been falsely assuming electrical current traveled through all parts of the germanium in a similar way. The electrons behaved differently at the surface of the metal. If they could control what was happening at the surface, the amplifier should work.

On December 23, 1947, Bardeen and Brattain—working without Shockley—succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor that achieved amplification. By the next month, Bell Labs' patent attorneys started to work on the patent applications.^[10]

Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered that Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925.^[11] Although the patent appeared "breakable" (it could not work), the patent attorneys based one of its four patent applications only on the Bardeen-Brattain point contact design. Three others submitted at the same time covered the electrolyte-based transistors with Bardeen, Gibney and Brattain as the inventors. Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. This angered Shockley, who thought his name should also be on the patents because the work was based on his field effect idea. He even made efforts to have the patent written only in his name, and told Bardeen and Brattain of his intentions.

At the same time, Shockley secretly continued his own work to build a different sort of transistor based on junctions instead of point contacts; he expected this kind of design would be more likely to be viable commercially. Shockley worked furiously on his magnum opus, Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors, which was finally published as a 558-page treatise in 1950. In it, Shockley worked out the critical ideas of drift and diffusion and the differential equations that govern the flow of electrons in solid state crystals. Shockley's diode equation is also described. This seminal work became the "bible" for an entire generation of scientists working to develop and improve new variants of the transistor and other devices based on semiconductors.

Shockley was dissatisfied with certain parts of the explanation for how the point contact transistor worked and conceived of the possibility of minority carrier injection. This led Shockley to ideas for what he called a "sandwich transistor." This resulted in the junction transistor, which was announced at a press conference on July 4, 1951. Shockley obtained a patent for this invention on September 25, 1951. Different fabrication methods for this device were developed but the "diffused-base" method became the method of choice for many applications. It soon eclipsed the point contact transistor, and it and its offspring became overwhelmingly dominant in the marketplace for many years. Shockley continued as a group head to lead much of the effort at Bell Labs to improve it and its fabrication for two more years.

Shockley took the lion's share of the credit in public for the invention of transistor, which led to a deterioration of Bardeen's relationship with Shockley.^[12] Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, and he essentially blocked the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen began pursuing a theory for superconductivity and left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley further and was assigned to another group. Neither Bardeen nor Brattain had much to do with the development of the transistor beyond the first year after its invention.^[13]

The "transistor" (a combination of "transfer" and "resistor") was 1/50 as large as the vacuum tubes it replaced in televisions and radios and allowed electrical devices to become more compact.^[2]

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[link]

A commemorative plaque remembering John Bardeen and the theory of superconductivity, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

By 1951, Bardeen was looking for a new job. Fred Seitz, a friend of Bardeen, convinced the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to make Bardeen an offer of $10,000 a year. Bardeen accepted the offer and left Bell Labs.^[10] He joined the engineering faculty and the physics faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1951. He was Professor of Electrical Engineering and of Physics at Illinois. His first Ph.D. student was Nick Holonyak (1954), the inventor of the first LED in 1962.^[14]

At Illinois, he established two major research programs, one in the Electrical Engineering Department and one in the Physics Department. The research program in the Electrical Engineering Department dealt with both experimental and theoretical aspects of semiconductors, and the research program in the Physics Department dealt with theoretical aspects of macroscopic quantum systems, particularly superconductivity and quantum liquids.^[15]

He was an active professor at Illinois from 1951 to 1975 and then became Professor Emeritus.^[2]

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956[link]

In 1956, John Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with William Shockley of Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments and Walter Brattain of Bell Telephone Laboratories "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".^[16]

Bardeen first heard the news that the Nobel Prize in Physics had been awarded to him, Brattain and Shockley when he was making breakfast and listening to the radio on the morning of Thursday, November 1, 1956.^[17]

The Nobel Prize ceremony took place in Stockholm, Sweden, on the evening of Monday, December 10. Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley received their awards that night from King Gustaf VI Adolf and then adjourned for a great banquet in their honor. On that night the three men were together, and they remembered the days when they had been friends and a great research team.^[17]

Bardeen brought only one of his three children to the Nobel Prize ceremony. His two sons were studying at Harvard University, and Bardeen did not want to disrupt their studies. King Gustav scolded Bardeen because of this, and Bardeen assured the King that the next time he would bring all his children to the ceremony. He kept his promise.^[17]

BCS theory[link]

In 1957, John Bardeen, in collaboration with Leon Cooper and his doctoral student John Robert Schrieffer, proposed the standard theory of superconductivity known as the BCS theory (named for their initials).^[2]

BCS theory explains conventional superconductivity, the ability of certain metals at low temperatures to conduct electricity without electrical resistance. BCS theory views superconductivity as a macroscopic quantum mechanical effect. It proposes that electrons with opposite spin can become paired, forming Cooper pairs. Independently and at the same time, superconductivity phenomenon was explained by Nikolay Bogoliubov by means of the so-called Bogoliubov transformations.

In many superconductors, the attractive interaction between electrons (necessary for pairing) is brought about indirectly by the interaction between the electrons and the vibrating crystal lattice (the phonons). Roughly speaking the picture is the following:

An electron moving through a conductor will attract nearby positive charges in the lattice. This deformation of the lattice causes another electron, with opposite "spin", to move into the region of higher positive charge density. The two electrons are then held together with a certain binding energy. If this binding energy is higher than the energy provided by kicks from oscillating atoms in the conductor (which is true at low temperatures), then the electron pair will stick together and resist all kicks, thus not experiencing resistance.

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972[link]

In 1972, John Bardeen shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon N Cooper of Brown University and John Robert Schrieffer of the University of Pennsylvania for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory.^[18]

Bardeen did bring all his children to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.^[17]

This was Bardeen's second Nobel Prize in Physics. He became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in the same field.^[19] He also became the third person out of only four to win two Nobel Prizes. The first two were Marie Curie, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, and Linus Pauling, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. In 1980, Frederick Sanger won his second Nobel Prize in Chemistry and became the fourth person to win two Nobel Prizes.^[20]

Bardeen gave much of his Nobel Prize money to fund the Fritz London Memorial Lectures at Duke University.^[21]

Other awards[link]

In 1952, he was awarded the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal.

In 1959, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[22]

In 1965, he was awarded the National Medal of Science.^[23]

In 1971, Bardeen received the IEEE Medal of Honor for "his profound contributions to the understanding of the conductivity of solids, to the invention of the transistor, and to the microscopic theory of superconductivity."

In 1975 he was awarded the Franklin Medal.

On January 10, 1977, John Bardeen was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford. He was represented at the ceremony by his son, William Bardeen.

Bardeen was one of 11 recipients given the Third Century Award from President George H. W. Bush in 1990 for "exceptional contributions to American society" and was granted a gold medal from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1988.

Xerox[link]

Bardeen was also an important advisor to Xerox Corporation. Though quiet by nature, he took the uncharacteristic step of urging Xerox executives to keep their California research center, Xerox PARC, afloat when the parent company was suspicious that its research center would amount to little.

Death[link]

Bardeen died of heart disease at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1991. Although he lived in Champaign-Urbana, he had come to Boston for medical consultation.^[2] Bardeen and his wife Jane (1907–1997) are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, WI.^[24] They were survived by three children, James & William and Elizabeth Bardeen Greytak, and six grandchildren.^[2]

Personal life[link]

Bardeen married Jane Maxwell on July 18, 1938. While at Princeton, he met Jane during a visit to his old friends in Pittsburgh.

Bardeen was a man with a very unassuming personality. While he served as a professor for almost 40 years at the University of Illinois, he was best remembered by neighbors for hosting cookouts where he would cook for his friends, many of whom were unaware of his accomplishments at the university. He would always ask his guests if they liked the hamburger bun toasted (since he liked his that way). He enjoyed playing golf and going on picnics with his family.^[14]

It has been said that Bardeen proves wrong the stereotype of the "crazy scientist."^[14] Lillian Hoddeson, a University of Illinois historian who wrote a book on Bardeen, said that because he "differed radically from the popular stereotype of genius and was uninterested in appearing other than ordinary, the public and the media often overlooked him."^[14]

Legacy[link]

In honor of Professor Bardeen, the engineering quadrangle at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is named the Bardeen.

Also in honor of Bardeen, Sony Corporation endowed a $53 million John Bardeen professorial chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, beginning in 1990. The current John Bardeen Professor is Nick Holonyak, Bardeen's first doctoral student and protege.

At the time of Bardeen's death, then-University of Illinois chancellor Morton Weir said, "It is a rare person whose work changes the life of every American; John's did."^[19]

Bardeen was honored on a March 6, 2008, United States postage stamp as part of the "American Scientists" series designed by artist Victor Stabin. The $0.41 stamp was unveiled in a ceremony at the University of Illinois.^[25] His citation reads: "Theoretical physicist John Bardeen (1908–1991) shared the Nobel Prize in Physics twice -- in 1956, as co-inventor of the transistor and in 1972, for the explanation of superconductivity. The transistor paved the way for all modern electronics, from computers to microchips. Diverse applications of superconductivity include infrared sensors and medical imaging systems." The other scientists on the "American Scientists" sheet include Gerty Cori, biochemist; Linus Pauling, chemist; and Edwin Hubble, astronomer.

References[link]

Cited references[link]

General references[link]

• Hoddeson, Lillian and Vicki Daitch. True Genius: the Life and Science of John Bardeen. National Academy Press, 2002. ISBN 0-309-08408-3

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Bardeen

• The Bardeen Archives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Biography from the Nobel Foundation
• Biography from Nobel-Winners.com
• IEEE History Center biography
• IEEE 2nd Int. Conference on Computers, Communications and Control (ICCCC 2008), an event dedicated to the Centenary of John Bardeen (1908-1991)
• Associated Press Obituary of John Bardeen as printed in The Boston Globe
• Oral History interview transcript with John Bardeen 12, 16 May, 1, 22 December 1977 & 4 April 1978, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• Oral History interview transcript with John Bardeen 13 February 1980, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• Interview with Bardeen about his experience at Princeton
• The American Presidency Project
• U.S. Patent 2,524,035 -- "Three-Electrode Circuit Element Utilizing Semiconductive Materials"

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.^[1]

History[link]

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[2][dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

It was also used as a term for a drug dealer in the 1950s and 1960s and can be seen in such media as Curtis Mayfield's "No Thing On Me", William Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, and in the Velvet Underground song "I'm Waiting for the Man", in which Lou Reed sings about going to Uptown Manhattan, specifically Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, to buy heroin.

The use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies, which, according to a May 19, 1969 article in U.S. News and World Report, had the "avowed aim ... to destroy 'The Man', their term for the present system of government". The term eventually found its way into humorous usage, such as in a December 1979 motorcycle ad from the magazine Easyriders which featured the tagline, "California residents: Add 6% sales tax for The Man."

In present day, the phrase has been popularized in commercials and cinema, featuring particularly prominently as a recurring motif in the 2003 film School of Rock.^[3][4][5][6]

Use as praise[link]

The term has also been used as an approbation or form of praise. This may refer to the recipient's status as the leader or authority within a particular context, or it might be assumed to be a shortened form of a phrase like "He is the man (who is in charge)." One example of this usage dates to 1879 when Otto von Bismarck commented, referring to Benjamin Disraeli's pre-eminent position at the Congress of Berlin, "The old Jew, he is the man."^{[7][dubious – discuss]}

In more modern usage, it can be a superlative compliment ("you da man!") indicating that the subject is currently standing out amongst his peers even though they have no special designation or rank, such as a basketball player who is performing better than the other players on the court. It can also be used as a genuine compliment with an implied, slightly exaggerated or sarcastic tone, usually indicating that the person has indeed impressed the speaker but by doing something relatively trivial.

See also[link]

• Absentee landlord
• Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• New World Order (conspiracy theory)
• Ruling class
• The Establishment
• Power elite
• Corrections officer
• YTMND

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lighter, J.E. (Ed.). (1997). Random House Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House.