I read an article in Physics Today some years ago about the Nobel prize given for the invention of the transistor (I’m a physicist). According to that artcie and others I’ve read, Shockley did not deserve the prize. At the time it was discovered, he was managing a lab or division at Bell Labs in New Jersey. There were two young physicists working under him, Bardeen and Brattain (sp?). It was throught at that time that it should be possible to make a solid state current amplifier, what came to be known as the ‘transistor’. Shockley tried to make one himself and failed. Then, he gave the task to Bardeen and Brattain. They succeeded. When he saw that, he took the project away from them so that he could work out a few possibilities in the development of the device himself, so that he could get some credit for the invention. So, the Nobel prize was awarded to Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain. Bardeen and Brattain were said to be unhapy about it and left Bell Labs not long after.
Bardeen went on to win another Nobel prize at the university of illinios for explaining superconductivity. When Bardeen and Brattain were asked about the prize years later, Brattain was vocal in his displeasure with Shockley and Bardeen just laughed about it. So, its ironic that Shockley would be the one talking about his superior intelligence, when he weasled credit for the transistor from the true inventors.
Shockley undoubtedly was not responsible for the initial device, muscled in on the resulting publicity, argued over the patents, pissed off both Bardeen and Brattain and generally wreaked havoc. Unfortunately, there was arguably still some credit due to him.
Once it became clear to him that Bardeen and Brattain’s point-contact device was going to work, he secretly began working on the development that became the junction transistor. Precisely because everybody involved was working with one eye on patents, all the documents were carefully preserved and Shockley did have a clear claim to the latter. However, it was obvious to all concerned that he was glory-hunting and he deliberately excluded Bardeen and Brattain from the team working on the junction transistor even after he’d revealed his idea within the company. (The most detailed account I know of the sequence of events is that in Riordan and Hoddeson’s excellent Crystal Fire, Norton, 1997.)
The pair of them were undoubtedly capable of coming up with the idea of the junction device had they been given a chance. His behaviour in excluding them at this stage thus says little for his character, but there’s little doubt that in practice that step was Shockley’s, for which he was awarded the patent.
Brattain always mocked the famous publicity photo of the three of them; it was his lab bench pictured and Shockley had never been anywhere near the apparatus before. Bardeen was always more circumspect in public about their falling out with Shockley, though the candid letter of resignation he wrote about the breakdown when he left Bell Labs is quoted at length by Hoddeson and Daitch in their biography of him (True Genius, Joseph Henry, 2002). Even in interviews after Shockley’s death, he always accepted that Shockley had played his part.
Joel Shurkin’s new Shockley biography Broken Genius (Macmillan, 2006) discusses the circumstances of their Nobel Prize in a bit of detail. (Though without having waited to see the Swedish Academy’s papers on the award, which will just recently have been unembargoed under their standard 50-year rule. To my knowledge, nobody’s said anything about what they say in this instance.) The question of whether Shockley should be included was discussed amongst American physicists at the time. Shurkin, while defending Shockley’s share of the prize, suggests that some people nominating all three may have been doing so because they thought that making the award at all might be controversial. And it certainly stands out as one of the more applied physics awards that there’s been. The suggestion is that being inclusive in the nomination was a way of smoothing over the wrinkles standing in the way.
However, what’s really striking in Shurkin’s account is Shockley’s utter paranoia about the matter. He wrote to the Swedes demanding to know whether there’d been any whispering campaign against him and, if so, who was involved. They wrote back essentially saying “We’ve given you the Prize, shut up!”.
Including him in the prize thus doesn’t seem to have made him particularly happy.
Bart: Okay, look, I made a terrible mistake. I wandered into a Junior Camper recruitment center, but what’s done is done: I’ve made my bed, and now I’ve got to weasel out of it.
Marge: I know you think the Junior Campers are square and “uncool”, but they also do a lot of neat things, like sing-alongs and flag ceremonies.
Homer: Marge, don’t discourage the boy. Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals!.. except the weasel.