William Shockley, English-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
Partly as a result of Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s, California's "Silicon Valley" became a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his later life, while a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, Shockley became a proponent of eugenics. A 2019 study in the journal Intelligence found him to be the second-most controversial (behind Arthur Jensen) intelligence researcher among 55 persons covered.
1910Feb, 13
William Shockley
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Events on 1910
- 11May
Glacier National Park (U.S.)
An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana. - 4Jul
Jack Johnson (boxer)
African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match, sparking race riots across the United States. - 15Jul
Alzheimer's disease
In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer. - 18Sep
Suffrage
In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage. - 7Nov
Wright brothers
The first air freight shipment (from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio) is undertaken by the Wright brothers and department store owner Max Moorehouse.