Walter H. Brattain
Whitman College
February 10, 1902 - October 13, 1987
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Scientific Discipline: Physics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1959)
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Walter Brattain was a physicist and an initial member of the Bell Solid State Department at Bell Laboratories, where he studied the surface properties of solids. Much of his research focused on signal amplification in semiconductors and the electrical properties of surfaces and interfaces. In 1947, with associates at Bell Laboratories, he co-invented the transistor, which replaced vacuum tubes in electronic devices. Brattain, John Bardeen, and William B. Shockley were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for “their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect."
