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Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age

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William Shockley generated some mild controversy as a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for the transistor, and a firestorm of controversy as an investigator of supposed linkages between race and intelligence. Mr. Shurkin sheds considerable light on both disputes, as well as on those facets of Shockley's personality which occasionally drifted from merely difficult into the scarier modes of overbearing and compulsive. The author's own attitude toward his subject leans, quite understandably, toward an uneasy blend of admiration and exasperation.

The transistor Nobel was awarded in 1954 to Shockley and his Bell Labs colleagues John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. A problematic aspect of the choice to honor all three was that although Shockley nominally led the research group, his direct involvement in the original (point contact) transistor invention was minimal. He did, however, have a legitimate conceptual claim to the later junction-type device, which became the practical transistor we know today. Shurkin's description of the contentious priority issues involved, and the human interactions among the principals, is fascinating.

One might say it's ironically fitting that a self-assured, iconoclastic, socially tone-deaf character like Shockley would blunder into the potential minefield of race/intelligence studies. On top of that, he chose the most politically radioactive combination possible -- white vs. black. The spectrum of opinion on that topic was (and is) bracketed at one end by bigots who just knew there must be an intelligence gap, and at the other end by knee-jerk egalitarians who just knew there couldn't possibly be one. The bigots embarrassed Shockley with unwanted support, and the egalitarians excoriated him for even looking at the question. The most recent and reasonable consensus seems to be that racial differences, genomically speaking, are too trivial to account for intelligence variations beyond the normal and expected spread due to both intra- and interracial gene mixing.

The biography is well-written and consistently interesting, but there are too many glitches to ignore. For example, "Schrodinger's atoms" on page 25 should be electrons, and the claim that Shockley wrote "the first textbook of the electronic age" (p.122) sounds preposterous to anyone who remembers vacuum tubes. Perhaps the author meant solid-state electronic age. For a similar reason, the book's subtitle needs revision. On page 105, the translation of 0.04 centimeter to 0.16 inch is too high by a factor of 10. The name of the strength program a youthful Shockley modeled for is spelled "Trelor" three times on page 18, but the ad reproduced on the same page conspicuously says "Treloar."

Joel Shurkin has done a reasonably good job in this book, and it is well worth reading if you have an interest in the history of technology and the forces that shape our times. Shockley was a very important player in the development of the transistor at Bell Labs, and his story has a lot to inform the reader about how scientists in an industrial laboratory work together in a situation that demands cooperation to get to the objective, and the competitive personalities that are found in people who excel. The story is usually told in a very oversimplified version like this: "Bardeen and Brattain invented the transistor and their boss, Shockley took the credit. He later went off the deep end into eugenics and racism." Shurkin shows that there was a whole lot more to the story and presents a much more nuanced and sympathetic portrait of this complicated man.

Apportioning credit in a group effort in an industrial setting is difficult and can be contentious even despite the best intentions of all concerned. Documentation is sketchy, memories often fail, lawyers are involved, and management has its own axes to grind. I've seen all this at first-hand in a large industrial laboratory, and have participated in endless lunchtime conversations on the twists and turns the patent process takes. Sometimes hard feelings in supposedly mature scientists sour relationships and even sever productive friendships. Bruising, but inevitable, in a way...

Shockley actually had three major phases in his working life as a scientist. In the first, he was an important and productive worker in the then new field of operations research applied to warfare in WWII. He led groups of men who studied the available data involved in the battle of the Atlantic, drew conclusions, and managed to get the military to take them seriously enough that they had a real impact on the outcome. Later in the war, he worked with the air-force to devise a practical training program for B-29 crews, and was awarded the Medal of Merit for it. Throughout the rest of his life he was a consultant to the armed services and the government on scientific matters. Shurkin tells the largely forgotten story of Shockley's independent invention of the nuclear reactor and the fission bomb. Amazing stuff.

Shockley then returned to Bell Labs as a group head of seven men who were assigned to apply the recent developments of quantum mechanics to the physics of solid state semiconductors. Shurkin maintains that Shockley, probably rightly, wanted to be included in the patent for the point-contact transistor, contrary to the popular myth. And it was Shockley who continued to work in bringing the junction transistor to life for many years afterwards, while Bardeen and Brattain went on to other things within the year. Shockley really understood the importance of the invention, and wrote the seminal book on the science of electrons and holes in semiconductors.

In his later years, after he left the field, he became interested in the genetics of intelligence, race and IQ, eugenics and dysgenics. He was much before his time on all of this, but in the following decades he has been largely vindicated, at least among those who actually know something about it. This part is a sad tale of a courageous man, living in difficult times, where truth-saying is hardly rewarded.

I was disappointed though, that Shurkin does not include a bibliography of Shockley's scientific papers, nor of his many patents. Nor is there enough about the science itself to suit me, but nevertheless I found the book to be rewarding and entertaining to boot. The pictures added a lot to the book. And I was comforted to realize in the end how inappropriate the title really is.

Joel Shurkin, a science writer and author, has written this informative but hardly authoritative biography of William Shockley, a Nobel laureate and scientist whose accomplishments include:

- helping the US Navy to win the Second World War with his spectacular work in Operational Research,
- his pioneering work on nuclear fission that was suppressed because it was an embarrassment to the government labs he beat to the punch,
- his invention of a transistor,
- his close proximity to the invention of the first transistor, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize,
- his being an accomplished professor at Stanford
- and his unhappy championing of a link between race and intelligence, which brought him into the close proximity of eugenic thinking, and made many deeply dislike him, such that his public appearances were often accompanied by demonstrations.

I enjoyed this book as a chronicle of Shockley's life, but found it to be disappointing in that I felt that it failed to explain why Shockley did what he did, most particularly, why did Shockley insist on publicly discussing his eugenic views? Was it because he lived for the notoriety? Was it due to a form of egomania? Can it be attributed to his political views? Shurkin doesn't tell us.

Shockley was, by all accounts, a very difficult, even insufferable, person, who, by the time he breathed his last, had few friends. To my mind it's clear that he suffered from what psychologists would describe as a personality disorder, and maybe even something similar to Asperger's. Shurkin explains these facts in a single paragraph; yet perhaps more than any other fact, they explain the trajectory of his life, the purported focus of this book. Why is more space not given to explaining what these means, and what it meant for Shockley, and, even, to what extent his seemingly irrational choices were not even voluntary acts on his part?

While this book offers a great deal of information about Shockley's life, in my opinion it is regrettably, even woefully, short on analyses and appraisals of the information it has to offer.

I am an engineer with particular interest in William Shockley because I was once barred from hearing him speak. This book presents an excellent recap of Shockley's entire life, concluding with the events that led to his downfall among the general public. I found the coverage to be generally fair and unbiased. Although the book provides the expected analysis of Shockley's later years, ample coverage is provided of his most productive years which, even under close scrutiny, show him to have indeed been a genius in several technical fields.

I am electrical engineer, and for me Shockley is THE inventor of junction transistor. Unfortunately, this period of his life is covered maybe on 50 pages and considered by the author as isnignificant. Rest of the book is about Shokley's social and genetic theores, what is as interesting to read as reading Webster Dictionary. I dropped the book after reading about half of it

Shockley's biography does a good job of taking the reader through his life, from his incredibly innovative early days in science and engineering, his remarkable ability to find brilliant collaborators and bring them together, through to his tragic fascination in later life with eugenics. While the narrative sometimes wanders and is distracted by excessive detail about minor people in Shockley's life, overall it does a fine job and paints a complete and non-judgemental picture of the man. I would recommend it to people curious about the history of technology and the computer or anyone interested in a rise and fall of truly epic proportions.

Shockley who helped give birth to the transistor (with John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and a couple of others who remain uncredited to this day) and a founding father of Silicon Valley became obsessed with issues of race, IQ and Eugenics towards the latter part of his life. Whatever achievements were in his past failed when it compared to the issues that dominated the bulk of his later career. He managed to alienate many of his contemporaries with his attitudes and beliefs.

He could be quite petty and belittle the accomplishments or try and steal the glory of others if he felt his own reputation was in danger. His life offered much potential that he wasn't able to always deliver on. As author Joel Shurkin points out his promise, life and fall would have given Greeks the perfect material for a great tragedy.


Later in life when he was a professor at Stanford he faced public ridicule and protests from students, faculty and critics over his stated views. A keen man with great insight into many things except himself he that would frequently throw tantrums if he was proven to be wrong. Shockley founded a company that would help provide the template for many of the companies that flourished in Silicon Valley later. In fact many of the best and brightest that he wooed to join his company would later go on to found Intel and other major U.S. companies that had a major impact on the computer world.

Shurkin had access to a number of previously unavailable papers in the Stanford Library to create this well rounded, insightful biography of a man as flawed as he was brilliant. Illustrated with rare and some previously unseen photos Shurkin's biography gives tremendous insight into Shockley, his accomplishments and failures.

Genius is definitely an overused word, but it accurately describes Shockley. I quote from the book: "Every transistor that powers the electronic age, the tens of millions now in our homes and offices, in our computers, watches, ovens, airplanes, CAT scan equipment, cars, fax machines, cameras, spaceships and yes, our telephones, is a descendant of THAT device [Shockley's junction transistor]. Shockley's feat--whatever the motivation--was his life's greatest achievement. It changed the world" (123).

I don't know what else the reader needs to know about him. The part of the book outlining Shockley's work at Bell Labs developing the transistor, his work for the military in WW II (much of it still secret), his teaching at Stanford is fascinating, as well as how he directly led to the founding of Silicon Valley.

Shurkin is a sympathetic biographer who had access to all of Shockley's papers--no restrictions. He clearly respects Shockley, but he spends a lot of time telling the reader how difficult Shockley could be with everyone who had dealings with him, including all the members of his family. His children weren't present when he died. Bad news and gossip sell newspapers and books, I guess. But so what?

The subtitle of the book is "The Rise and Fall of William Shockley . . . " I'm sorry,
but I just don't see any "fall" in his life. He was eccentric--Shurkin reveals a lot of his habits and idiosyncrasies--as were Newton and Einstein, and many others. Does anyone refer to the fall of Newton or Einstein?

The title suggests that he died destitute in a garret, sipping on a bottle of cheap wine. Nothing of the sort. His second wife Emmy, who give Shurkin license to write whatever he wanted, loved him to the end of his life. She is still alive and authorized this biography.

What bothered a lot of people about Shockley was that he took on a very unpopular project toward the end of his life. He was convinced that allowing a lot of people of low intelligence to reproduce would be dysgenic and lead to a decline in civilization. But Shurkin does a good job of showing that a lot of what Shockley believed and wrote about is now thought to be true: e.g., the heritability of intelligence, racial disparities in IQ, etc. He is also good at showing the blatant dishonesty of the people who vilified him.

I have one reservation about this book. It might have been more convenient for the reader if all the information about valves (tubes), transistors, semiconductors and so forth had been put in one place in an appendix. For someone not familiar with electronics, the information is spread out over many pages in different places and is difficult to refer to.

Shockley worked at Bell Labs for many years. I, too, worked there and had no idea why we did what we did, why we had the philosophies we did, etc... Almost 35 years later, I still saw the footprints of Shockley's world. That, to me, was very interesting. His life was extraordinary and a huge lesson in something. I'm not sure what that something is yet but after this all soaks in, maybe I can make heads or tails of it. It was all so strange. A brilliant mind is all so strange and the author did such a superb job of letting us into the secret. Thanks Joel!

The winners write the history, and the history of Silicon Valley is no exception. Until this book William Shockley, if he was known at all, was thought of as the eccentric Nobel Prize winner who became an intellectual outcast because of his eugenics beliefs and as the bad manager whose employees quit and founded Fairchild and Intel.

For those who know a bit more about the history of Silicon Valley technology, William Shockley is known as the founder of the Valley's first semiconductor company. Shockley recruited and assembled the seminal team that was the progenitor of every other semiconductor company in Silicon Valley. His instincts for talent-spotting were phenomenal, but they were matched by a massive lack of judgment about how to build products customers would buy and a complete lack of the insights necessary to motivate and manage an entrepreneurial company.

Joel Shurkin does a good job in telling the story of not just Schokley Semiconductor, but the interesting life surrounding it all- the rise and fall - of William Schockley. A great read.