Editing William Shockley (section)

===Development of the transistor===
Shortly after the war ended in 1945, Bell Labs formed a solid-state physics group, led by Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan, which included [[John Bardeen]], [[Walter Brattain]], physicist [[Gerald Pearson]], chemist [[Robert Gibney]], electronics expert [[Hilbert Moore]], and several technicians. Their assignment was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass [[vacuum tube]] amplifiers. First attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. These experiments 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 group had excellent rapport and freely exchanged ideas.<ref>Brattain quoted in ''Crystal Fire'' p. 127</ref>

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 [[electrolyte]]s. Moore built a circuit that allowed them to vary the frequency of the input signal easily. Finally they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley, put a voltage on a droplet of glycol borate placed across a [[p–n junction]].<ref name="Crystal Fire p. 132">''Crystal Fire'' p.132</ref>
[[File:Bardeen Shockley Brattain 1948.JPG|thumb|John Bardeen (left), William Shockley and Walter Brattain (right) at [[Bell Labs]], 1948]]

Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and devices based on it patented in 1930 by [[Julius Lilienfeld]], who filed his [[MESFET]]-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925.<ref>{{patent|CA|272437 |"Electric current control mechanism", first filed in Canada on October 22, 1925}}</ref><ref>[http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/lilienfeld.htm Lilienfeld] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061002065548/http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/lilienfeld.htm |date=October 2, 2006 }}</ref> 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 first) covered the electrolyte-based transistors with Bardeen, Gibney and Brattain as the inventors.{{citation needed|date=June 2020}}

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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/William_Shockley |title=William Shockley |work=IEEE Global History Network |publisher=IEEE |access-date=July 18, 2011}}</ref>

Shockley, angered by not being included on the patent applications, 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 commercially viable. The point contact transistor, he believed, would prove to be fragile and difficult to manufacture. Shockley was also dissatisfied with certain parts of the explanation for how the point contact transistor worked and conceived of the possibility of [[minority carrier]] injection.

On February 13, 1948, another team member, [[John N. Shive]], built a point contact transistor with bronze contacts on the front and back of a thin wedge of [[germanium]], proving that [[Electron hole|holes]] could diffuse through bulk germanium and not just along the surface as previously thought.<ref name="crystal-fire">{{cite book
 | title = Crystal fire: the invention of the transistor and the birth of the information age
 | isbn = 978-0-393-31851-7
 |author1=Michael Riordan |author1-link=Michael Riordan (physicist) |author2=Lillian Hoddeson |author2-link=Lillian Hoddeson
 |name-list-style=amp | year = 1998
 | publisher = W. W. Norton & Company
 }}</ref>{{rp|153}}<ref name="True Genius">{{cite book
 |title=True genius: the life and science of John Bardeen : the only winner of two Nobel prizes in physics
 |last1=Hoddeson
 |first1=Lillian
 |last2=Daitch
 |first2=Vicki
 |date=2002
 |publisher=Joseph Henry Press
 |isbn=978-0-309-08408-6
 |url=https://archive.org/details/truegeniuslifesc0000hodd
 |access-date=December 30, 2014
 |url-access=registration
 }}
*{{cite magazine |author=Diana Buchwald |date=March–April 2003 |title=John Who? |url=http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/john-who |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150102044400/http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/john-who |archive-date=2015-01-02 |magazine=American Scientist |volume=91 |number=2}}</ref>{{rp|145}} Shive's invention sparked<ref name="Brittain1984p1695" /> Shockley's invention of the junction transistor.<ref name="crystal-fire"/>{{rp|143}} A few months later he invented an entirely new, considerably more robust, type of transistor with a layer or 'sandwich' structure. This structure went on to be used for the vast majority of all transistors into the 1960s, and evolved into the bipolar junction transistor. Shockley later described the workings of the team as a "mixture of cooperation and competition". He also said that he kept some of his own work secret until his "hand was forced" by Shive's 1948 advance.<ref name=":3">{{cite news
 | title = Inventors of the transistor followed diverse paths after 1947 discovery
 | url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nqlJAAAAIBAJ&pg=4602,1428735
 | publisher = Associated press – Bangor Daily news
 | date = December 25, 1987
| access-date = May 6, 2012
| quote = 'mixture of cooperation and competition' and 'Shockley, eager to make his own contribution, said he kept some of his own work secret until "my hand was forced" in early 1948 by an advance reported by John Shive, another Bell Laboratories researcher'
}}</ref> Shockley worked out a rather complete description of what he called the "sandwich" transistor, and a first [[Proof of concept|proof of principle]] was obtained on April 7, 1949.

Meanwhile, Shockley worked on his [[Masterpiece|magnum opus]], ''[[Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors]]'' which was published as a 558-page treatise in 1950. The tome included Shockley's critical ideas of drift and diffusion and the differential equations that govern the flow of electrons in solid state crystals. [[Shockley diode equation|Shockley's diode equation]] is also described. This seminal work became the reference text for other scientists working to develop and improve new variants of the transistor and other devices based on semiconductors.<ref>''Broken Genius'', p 121-122</ref>

This resulted in his invention of the bipolar "[[Bipolar junction transistor|junction transistor]]", which was announced at a press conference on July 4, 1951.<ref>{{Cite web|url = http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1951-First.html|title = 1951 – First grown-junction transistors fabricated|publisher = [[Computer History Museum]]|year = 2007|access-date = July 3, 2013}}</ref>

In 1951, he was elected to the [[United States National Academy of Sciences|National Academy of Sciences]] (NAS). He was forty-one years old; this was rather young for such an election. Two years later, he was chosen as the recipient of the prestigious [[Comstock Prize in Physics|Comstock Prize]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Vitae/NASaward/nasaward.html|title=Comstock Prize}}</ref> for Physics by the NAS, and was the recipient of many other awards and honors.

The ensuing publicity generated by the "invention of the transistor" often thrust Shockley to the fore, much to the chagrin of Bardeen and Brattain. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Though Shockley would correct the record where reporters gave him sole credit for the invention,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/shockley/shockley3.html|title=Bill Shockley, Part 3 of 3|first=ScienCentral|last=ScienCentral|website=www.pbs.org}}</ref> he 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.<ref>''Crystal Fire'' p. 278</ref>

Shockley left Bell Labs around 1953 and took a job at Caltech.<ref name=":4" />

Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.<ref name=":7" />