In 1947, Bardeen, along with Walter Brattain and William P. Schockley, developed the first semiconductor transistor at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. The invention was first used commercially in telephone switching equipment in 1952. The three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956 for their invention, which heralded the dawn of modern electronics by replacing the vacuum tube.
In 1951, Bardeen joined the University of Illinois faculty, where he would develop a theory of low-temperature superconductivity, which he considered his greatest professional accomplishment. In 1972, he won his second Nobel Prize for this research, along with two scientists who worked with him as graduate students, Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schreiffer. He retired in 1975.
Bardeen received his B.S. in 1928 and his M.S. in 1929, both in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After working as a geophysicist at Gulf Research Laboratories in ...
