-
William Shockley was born Febuary 13th, 1910 in England, UK.
-
Shockley and his family moved to Palo Alto, California when he was only three years old.
-
Shockley was homeschooled from age 5-8 (1915-1918)
-
Lewis Terman evaluated Skockley's IQ and although he discovered William was not a genius, he was smart enough to skip middle school.
-
Shockley attended Palo Alto Military Academy and Hollywood High School
-
Shockley attended UCLA his freshman year of college, then transferred to CalTech
-
William completed his BS in physics at CalTech in 1932
-
After graduating from CalTech Shockley was offered a graduate fellowship which he accepted. He then earned his Ph.D at MIT in 1936.
-
Shockley began his 20+ year career at Bell Labs after graduating from MIT.
-
He served as the director of research for the U.S. Navy's Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group
-
Shockley worked with Stanley Morgan, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, Gerald Pearson, Robert Gibney, and Hilbert Moore to find an alternative to glass vacuum tubes, publishing findings in 1946.
-
Shockley and team invented the point-contact transistor in 1947. This work earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics.
-
He published ‘Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors’, a 558 page treatise collection of his research and work.
-
Shockley moved back to the west coast to set up his own laboratory. He was known for being difficult to work with and eventually the company was sold off.
-
In Shockley's later years he became obsessed with IQ intelligence. He believed that people with low IQ should stop reproducing. Additionally, he became particularly racist against African-Americans.
-
Shockley died of prostate cancer in 1989
