Walter Brattain
More info
- Born
- Died
- Known for
- The point-contact transistor
- Nationality
- American
The experimental physicist with his hands in the apparatus when the first transistor amplified a signal in 1947.
Brattain was born in 1902 in Amoy, China, to American parents and grew up on a cattle ranch in Washington state — a long way from the Bell Labs benches where he spent his whole career. He was the group's finest experimentalist, the man who made the theorists' ideas actually work on the table.
During the decisive weeks of December 1947 it was Brattain who rigged the germanium slab, the gold foil and the little plastic wedge and measured the gain. He shared the Nobel Prize in 1956 with Bardeen and Shockley. Unlike Shockley he kept a lifelong reputation as a plain-spoken and generous colleague, and taught his final years at his old college back in Washington.