Walter Houser Brattain was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947.
23 Facts About Walter Brattain
2.
Walter Brattain was born in Amoy, Fujian, Qing China, to American parents Ross R Brattain and Ottilie Houser Brattain.
3.
Ross R Brattain was a teacher at the Ting-Wen Institute, a private school for Chinese boys; Ottilie Houser Brattain was a gifted mathematician.
4.
Ottilie and baby Walter Brattain returned to the United States in 1903, and Ross followed shortly afterward.
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Walter Brattain attended high school in Washington, spending one year at Queen Anne High School in Seattle, two years at Tonasket High School, and one year at Moran School for Boys on Bainbridge Island.
6.
Walter Brattain earned a bachelor's degree from Whitman in 1924, with a double major in physics and mathematics.
7.
Walter Brattain earned a Master of Arts from the University of Oregon in Eugene in 1926, and a Ph.
8.
At Minnesota, Walter Brattain had the opportunity to study the new field of quantum mechanics under John Hasbrouck Van Vleck.
9.
Walter Brattain's thesis, supervised by John T Tate, was Efficiency of Excitation by Electron Impact and Anomalous Scattering in Mercury Vapor.
10.
Walter Brattain moved to Seattle in the 1970s and lived there until his death from Alzheimer's disease on October 13,1987.
11.
Walter Brattain is buried at City Cemetery in Pomeroy, Washington.
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From 1927 to 1928 Walter Brattain worked for the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC, where he helped to develop piezoelectric frequency standards.
13.
Walter Brattain was able to attend a lecture by Arnold Sommerfeld.
14.
Walter Brattain's group developed magnetometers sensitive enough to detect anomalies in the earth's magnetic field caused by submarines.
15.
Bardeen was a quantum physicist, Walter Brattain a gifted experimenter in materials science, and Shockley, the leader of their team, was an expert in solid-state physics.
16.
Walter Brattain ordered Brattain and Bardeen to find out why it wouldn't.
17.
Walter Brattain actively excluded Bardeen and Brattain from new areas of research, in particular the junction transistor, which Shockley patented.
18.
Walter Brattain continued to study the surface properties of solids and the "transistor effect", so as to better understand the various factors underlying semiconductor behavior.
19.
Walter 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.
20.
Walter Brattain became interested in blood clotting after his son required heart surgery.
21.
Walter Brattain collaborated with Whitman chemistry professor David Frasco, using phospholipid bilayers as a model to study the surface of living cells and their absorption processes.
22.
Walter Brattain taught at Harvard University as a visiting lecturer in 1952 and at Whitman College as a visiting lecturer in 1962 and 1963, and a visiting professor beginning in 1963.
23.
Walter Brattain retired from teaching in 1976 but continued to be a consultant at Whitman.