In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age
  • Nathan Ensmenger (bio)
Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age. By Joel N. Shurkin . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp ix+297. $27.95.

The essential facts about William Shockley are well-known: he was the co-inventor, with the lesser-known Walter Brattain and John Bardeen, of the point-contact transistor, work for which all three men were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics; he founded, in the late 1950s, the Shockley Semiconductor Company, which, although itself a commercial failure, served directly or indirectly as the progenitor of most major Silicon Valley semiconductor firms; and he was notoriously difficult to work with or for. Shockley's role in the development of the semiconductor, although often misrepresented in the popular press, has been ably recounted by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson in their 1997 book Crystal Fire, and more recently by such historians as Ross Bassett and Christophe Lecuyer.

But as much as we have known about Shockley as an inventor, until recently we have known very little about Shockley as an individual. This is [End Page 887] odd, since even by the high standards set by Nobel Prize–winning scientists, Shockley was an intriguing and eccentric personality. His life was intertwined with several of the most important technical developments of the twentieth century. In addition to his work at Bell Laboratories on the semiconductor transistor, Shockley had an extensive career as a military consultant. In 1940 he wrote the earliest known government report on the feasibility of producing nuclear energy through fission. During the war, he developed operations research techniques for the U.S. Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG). He served as an expert advisor to the secretary of war, where his work on the "effectiveness" of B-29 bombing campaigns helped make possible the night bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in the spring of 1945.

Shockley was also an avid amateur magician, practical jokester, and mountain climber (most famously of "Shockley's Ceiling" in the Shawangunk Ridge in upstate New York). In his later years he devoted his life to the promotion of eugenic principles, and he acquired an international reputation as a scientific racist. In 1982 he ran as a Republican candidate for one of California's empty Senate seats, solely on the issue of "disgenics." He gave interviews in Playboy and famously donated to a sperm bank established for Nobel Prize winners. Despite his many accomplishments as a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and instructor, he alienated most of his friends, family, and colleagues, dying "terribly alone," as Joel Shurkin tells us in his remarkable new biography.

Shurkin provides a rich and nuanced picture of Shockley based on unique access to his extensive (perhaps obsessive) collection of personal documents. Without shying away from the uglier aspects of Shockley's life and personality (at one point describing Shockley as "anti-charismatic"), Shurkin nevertheless manages to provide a fair and sympathetic portrayal of this brilliant, flawed, and yet compelling figure.

The book is informally organized into three main periods. The first describes Shockley's early development—dwelling on his unstable family life with its frequent disruptions and relocations, and his violent temper and erratic behavior as a child—and his academic training, first as an undergraduate at UCLA and Caltech, and then as a Ph.D. student in physics at MIT. It was at MIT that Shockley was discovered by influential physicist Phil Morse, who would ultimately lead Shockley to Bell Labs, and later to his wartime role in ASWORG and other advisory groups.

The second period covers Shockley's time at Bell Labs, his role in the invention of the point-contact and junction transistor, and the founding of Shockley Semiconductor. While there is nothing particularly novel in Shurkin's recounting of these well-known events, his coverage of complicated technical and organizational details is clear and coherent. He acknowledges Shockley's important contributions to these developments, particularly in his capacity as an administrator and advisor, while also [End Page 888] restoring to prominence the contributions of Bardeen and...

pdf

Share