Walter Brattain
1902–1987, Xiamen, China, Seattle, Washington
American experimental physicist who, with John Bardeen, built the first transistor at Bell Labs and won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Born in Xiamen, China, to American parents, Brattain grew up on a ranch in Washington, studied at Whitman College, and earned his doctorate at the University of Minnesota. He joined Bell Labs in 1929 and spent nearly four decades investigating the surface properties of semiconductors.
Working with John Bardeen under William Shockley's direction, he built the first point-contact transistor in December 1947 — the first solid-state device capable of amplifying electric current. After leaving Bell in 1967, he returned to teach at Whitman until retirement.
Nobel-winning work
In Shockley's semiconductor group at Bell Labs, Brattain was the experimentalist paired with theorist John Bardeen. The two studied surface states in germanium and, on 23 December 1947, demonstrated the point-contact transistor: two gold-foil electrodes a few hundred micrometres apart on a germanium crystal.
The device amplified signals by a factor of about twenty — the first experimental proof of the transistor effect. Published in Physical Review in 1948, the result opened the era of solid-state electronics, delivering a miniaturization, cost, and reliability that vacuum tubes could never match.
Workplaces: Bell Labs, Whitman College
United States