From 1928 to 1929, Brattain worked for the
National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., where he helped to develop
piezoelectric frequency standards. In August 1929, he joined Joseph A. Becker at
Bell Telephone Laboratories as a research physicist. As early as the 1930s Brattain worked with
William Shockley on the idea of a semiconductor amplifier that used copper oxide, an early and unsuccessful attempt at creating a
field-effect transistor. Other researchers at Bell and elsewhere were also experimenting with semiconductors, using materials such as
germanium and
silicon, but the pre-war research effort was somewhat haphazard and lacked strong theoretical grounding. During
World War II, both Brattain and Shockley were separately involved in research on magnetic detection of submarines with the
National Defense Research Committee at
Columbia University. As a result of this work, in 1944, Brattain patented a design for a magnetometer head. In 1945, Bell Labs reorganized and created a group specifically to do fundamental research in solid-state physics, relating to communications technologies. Creation of the sub-department was authorized by the vice-president for research,
Mervin Kelly. They often played bridge and golf together.
Invention of the transistor ,
William Shockley, and Brattain
(right) at Bell Labs, 1948 According to theories of the time, Shockley's
field-effect transistor, a cylinder coated thinly with silicon and mounted close to a metal plate, should have worked. He ordered Brattain and Bardeen to find out why it wouldn't. During November and December, the two men carried out a variety of experiments, attempting to determine why Shockley's device wouldn't amplify. Brattain, equally importantly, "had an intuitive feel for what you could do in semiconductors". Brattain and Bardeen eventually managed to create a small level of amplification by pushing a gold metal point into the silicon, and surrounding it with distilled water. Replacing silicon with germanium enhanced the amplification, but only for low frequency currents. Convinced by the 1947 demonstration that a major breakthrough was being made, Bell Labs focused intensively on what it now called the
Surface States Project. Initially, strict secrecy was observed. Carefully restricted internal conferences within Bell Labs shared information about the work of Brattain, Bardeen, Shockley and others who were engaged in related research. He actively excluded Bardeen and Brattain from new areas of research, Describing it as "an intolerable situation," Bardeen left Bell Labs in 1951 to go to the
University of Illinois, where he eventually won a second Nobel Prize for his theory of
superconductivity. In 1956, the three men were jointly awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics by
King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect." Each of the three gave a lecture. Brattain spoke on
Surface Properties of Semiconductors, Bardeen on
Semiconductor Research Leading to the Point Contact Transistor, and Shockley on
Transistor Technology Evokes New Physics.
Other work Brattain later collaborated with P. J. Boddy and P. N. Sawyer on several papers on electrochemical processes in living matter. == Personal life and death ==