Bell, William

Some 20 years after the pressure for the creation of the new interdisciplinary laboratories was first felt, one of the academics who became involved very early on. Prof. Rustum Roy of Pennsylvania State University, wrote eloquently about the underlying ideal of interdisciplinarity (Roy 1977). He also emphasised the supportive role played by some influential industrial scientists in that creation, notably Dr. Guy Suits of GE, whom we have already encountered, and Dr. William Baker of Bell Laboratories who was a major force in pushing for interdisciplinary materials research in industry and academe alike. A magisterial survey by Baker (1967), under the title Solid State Science and Materials Development, indicates the breadth and scope of his scientific interests. 

The Shockley involved in this symposium was ihe same William Shockley who had participated in the invention of the transistor in 1947. Soon after that momentous event, he became very frustrated at Bell Laboratories (and virtually broke with his coinventors, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen), as depicted in detail in a rivetting history of the transistor (Riordan and Hoddeson 1997). For some years, while still working at Bell Laboratories, he became closely involved with dislocation geometry, clearly as a means of escaping from his career frustrations, before eventually turning fulltime to transistor manufacture. 

Ohl demonstrated his results to Kelly early in 1940 Kelly felt that his instincts had been proved justified. Thereupon, Bell Labs had to focus single-mindedly on radar and on silicon rectifiers for this purpose. It was not till 1945 that basic research restarted. This was the year that the theorist John Bardeen was recruited, and he in due course became inseparable from Walter Brattain, an older man and a fine experimenter who had been with Bell since the late 1920s. William Shockley formed the third member of the triumvirate, though from an early stage he and Bardeen found themselves so mutually antagonistic that Bardeen was sometimes close to resignation. But tension can be productive as well as depressing. 

William Shockley (seated), John Bardeen (standing, left), and Waller H. Braltain doing transistor research at Bell Telephone Laboratories (New York, 194S). (Corbis Corporation)... 

The study of electrons trapped in matter (commonly termed solid state ) led eventually to the invention of the transistor in 1947 by Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Shockley at Bell Laboratories, and then to the integrated circuit hy Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby a decade later. Use of these devices dominated the second half of the twentieth century, most notably through computers, with a significant stininlus to development being given by military expenditures. 

Prof. William P. Slichter, Chemical Physics Research Department, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07971, U.S.A. 

Prof. Gunter Victor Schulz, Niklas-Vogt StraBe 22, 6500 Mainz, FRG Prof. William P. Shchter, Executive, Director, Research-Materials Science and Engineering Division AT T Bell Laboratories, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, U.S.A. 

ADEL F. SAROFIM, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ROBERT S. SCHECHTER, University of Texas, Austin WILLIAM R. SCHOWALTER, Princeton University L. E. SCRIVEN, University of Miimesota JOHN H. SEINFELD, California Institute of Technology JOHN H. SINFELT, Exxon Research and Engineering Company LARRY F. THOMPSON, AT T Bell Laboratories KLAUS D. TIMMERHAUS, University of Colorado ALFRED E. WECHSLER, Arthur D. Little, Inc. 

Luther, Martin. The table talk of Martin Luther. Translated by William Hazlitt. Translated by William Hazlitt. London G. Bell, 1902. 

McKee, S. L., Dyakowski, T., Williams, R. A., and Bell, A., Solids Flow Imaging and Attrition Studies in a Pneumatic Conveyor, Powder Tech., 82 105(1995)... 

The second kind of laser was built by one of my former students, Mirek Stevenson, and one of Bloembergen s former students, [Peter] Sorokin, at General Electric. The third kind of laser was built at Bell Laboratories by one of my students in microwave spectroscopy, Ali Javan. He worked with Bill Bennett [William R. Bennett, Jr.], one of Kusch s students, who had been working in microwave spectroscopy at Columbia. This new laser was the helium-neon gas laser, built by Javan, Bennett and [Donald R.] Herriott, who was an optical guy. The next type was a semiconductor laser, which was built at General Electric by [Robert N.] Hall. 

Some of the Farben prosecution staff as well as some members of the Farben investigating teams have reviewed this book and made helpful suggestions. The following persons in particular devoted much time and effort to suggesting material and reviewing the manuscript Belle Mayer Zeck, Emanuel Minskoff, Drexel Sprecher, Joseph Friedman, Bernard Bernstein, Ansel Luxford, and John Pehle. Valuable data were supplied by Jerry Weiss, William Acton, and Beniamin Ferencz. 

In 1948 William Bradford Shockley (1910-1989), who is considered the inventor of the transistor, and his associates at Bell Research Laboratories, Walter Houser Brattain (1902-1987) and John Bardeen (1908-1991), discovered that a crystal of germanium could act as a semiconductor of electricity. This unique property of germanium indicated to them that it could be used as both a rectifier and an amplifier to replace the old glass vacuum tubes in radios. Their friend John Robinson Pierce (1910-2002) gave this new solid-state device the name transistor, since the device had to overcome some resistance when a current of electricity passed through it. Shockley, Brattain, and Bardeen all shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Lobell R, Anthony N, Bell I, Buser C, Desolms J, Dinsmore C, Gibbs J, Graham S, Hartman G, Heimbrook D, Huber H, Lumma W, William T, Kohl N (2001) Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res 42 259... 

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