Engineering Hall of Fame:

Celebrating the Centennial of the Birth of Nobel Physicist Walter Brattain 
(10 February 1902 - 13 October 1987)

by Frederik Nebeker

Nobel Physicist Walter Houser Brattain was born on 10 February 1902 in Amoy, China, where his father worked as a teacher. Not long after his birth, his family returned to the United States, settling on a ranch in Tonasket, Washington. Brattain graduated from Whitman College (Wash.) in 1924, received a master's degree from the University of Oregon, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1929. After spending almost a year at the National Bureau of Standards, he moved to Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1929, where he would stay until he retired.

Along with Bell Labs colleague Joseph Becker, Brattain worked on thermal emission of electrons, which improved the performance of electron tubes, before moving on to work on copper-oxide rectifiers. In the 1930s, Bell Labs took a keen interest in such semiconductors as copper oxide. Used primarily in crystal radios, these semiconductors' properties were well known. It seemed, however, that they had several other uses as well, including being used for temperature-dependent resistance. Electronics remained almost entirely dependent upon electron tubes, and these semiconductors played an important role as amplifiers. Becker and Brattain were among those who suggested that it might be possible to design a solid-state amplifier, even though previous attempts made to build such a device had failed.

During World War II, Brattain's work focused on sensitive magnetometers to detect submarines and on infrared detectors for use in bombsights. But after the war, William Shockley, together with the chemist Stanley Morgan, headed a Bell Labs group on solid-state physics. Shockley was determined to build a solid-state amplifier, and  Brattain eagerly joined the effort — as did the promising young physicist, John Bardeen.

Brattain focused on understanding the surface properties of semiconductors. Shortly before Christmas 1947, he and Bardeen ultimately succeeded in obtaining amplification with what became known as a point-contact transistor. Bell Labs announced the invention publicly in June 1948. While the announcement attracted little interest — the New York Times gave it a few paragraphs under "News of Radio" deep within the paper — Brattain, Bardeen and Shockley were honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics as the inventors of the transistor just eight years later.

Brattain continued his investigations of the surface properties of semiconductors. He also contributed to the biophysics disciplines with his models of cell surfaces. He remained almost four decades at Bell Labs before retiring in 1967. He then served as an adjunct professor at his alma mater, Whitman College, until 1972. Brattain died in Seattle on 13 October 1987.

Frederik Nebeker is Senior Research Historian at the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at: www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/.