When was William Shockley born?

William Shockley was born on 13 February 1910 in London.

Where did William Shockley study?

William Shockley was educated at California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chuck Painter / Stanford News Service · CC BY 3.0

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William Shockley

American physicist and inventor (1910–1989)

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William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect."

Quick facts

Born: 13 February 1910 wd
Place of birth: London wd
Died: 12 August 1989 wd
Place of death: Stanford wd
Citizenship: United Kingdom, United States wd
Occupation: physicist, inventor, university teacher wd
Political party: Republican Party wd
Education: California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology wd
Spouse: Jean Bailey, Emmy Lanning wd

Awards wd

Nobel Prize in Physics (1956)
Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1953)
IEEE Medal of Honor (1980)
Wilhelm Exner Medal (1963)
National Inventors Hall of Fame (1974)
IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award (1952)
Holley Medal (1963)
Fellow of the American Physical Society
Comstock Prize in Physics (1953)
Time Person of the Year

About

Partly as a result of Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s, California's Silicon Valley became a hotbed of electronics innovation. He recruited brilliant employees, but quickly alienated them with his autocratic and erratic management; they left and founded major companies in the industry.

In his later life, while he was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and afterward, Shockley became known for his outspoken promotion of racism and eugenics.

Questions

When was William Shockley born?: William Shockley was born on 13 February 1910 in London.
Where did William Shockley study?: William Shockley was educated at California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sources

Last updated 1 November 2026 · facts checked 5 November 2026

Cite this page

"William Shockley". DigiNepal. Last updated 1 November 2026. https://diginpl.com/people/william-shockley. Retrieved 5 November 2026.

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Text from the Wikipedia article William Shockley, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page's text is shared under the same licence. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: William Shockley, Stanford University.jpg — Chuck Painter / Stanford News Service, CC BY 3.0.

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