Wannier received his physics PhD under
Ernst Stueckelberg at the
University of Basel in 1935. He worked with Professor
Eugene P. Wigner as a post-doc exchange student at Princeton in the academic year 1936/1937 and later taught at several American universities before a stint in industry from 1946 to 1960. After working at
Socony-Vacuum Laboratories, he joined
Bell Laboratories in 1949. There he was in the
Physical Electronics Group with colleagues such as
William B. Shockley,
Conyers Herring,
John Bardeen,
Charles Kittel, and
Philip W. Anderson. He returned to academia in 1961 at the
University of Oregon, where he retired as professor emeritus in 1977. He published a series of important papers on the properties of
crystals, working with graduate students (including
Douglas Hofstadter among others) and visiting professors. Additionally, he published widely read textbooks on solid-state theory and statistical mechanics. He was regarded by many in the department as its most eminent member until his death on October 21, 1983. He was a fellow of the
American Physical Society. ==Books==