The first transistor looked like a piece of plastic wedged between twisted wires. But the contraption would start an electronics revolution: It shrunk room-sized computers into pocket calculators, pulled Japan from ash into the heights of modern technology and sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon.
One of its inventors is John Bardeen, 81, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Although his transistor began a new era in technology, Bardeen himself remains largely unknown to the public. This, of course, frustrates many scientists, who consider Bardeen among the greatest minds of the 20th Century, in the same league as Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein. They point out that a transistor, which amplifies electrical signals, is the key element of digital watches, stereos, television sets, video games, nuclear missiles, space shuttles and supercomputers.
”The whole damn structure of civilization depends on Bardeen`s technology,” said Nick Holonyak, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois. ”It`s impossible to measure the number of lives he`s touched. He`s not just a hero, but a hero beyond our comprehension.”
The last person who would say that is Bardeen himself. He spends a lot of time in his office, hidden away by walls of books and scientific journals. The academic community has showered Bardeen with more than 30 awards and two Nobel Prizes in physics, but he keeps only two plaques hanging on the wall. He does, however, keep a green street sign bearing his name.
Smiling, Bardeen said he doesn`t mind not being a celebrity. ”I`m happier without the recognition. My work is known to science, not to the general public, and that`s more important to me.”
When asked a question, Bardeen stares into space for several moments before responding in a low whisper. His friends explain that he doesn`t like to waste words, so he carefully thinks out his responses.
He said he wanted to hide from the press in October when Sony gave the University of Illinois $3 million to endow a chair in John Bardeen`s name. It was Sony`s largest gift ever to an American University.
”If there were no transistor, there would be no Sony as we know it today,” said George Hatoyama, the retired director of Sony Research Laboratories in Japan.
Japan`s rise from rubble to superpower dates from 1953, when Sony, then a tiny company, obtained a transistor license from Western Electric. Sony developed the world`s first commercially successful transistor radio in 1955 and the world`s first transistor television set in 1962. It rapidly grew into a $16 billion company that manufactures compact discs, video recorders, stereos, television sets and other household electronics items.
Bardeen, who is continuing his research in the frontiers of electronics, worries about the U.S. losing its competitive edge to Japan. He is also concerned about the future of the Midwest, where he grew up and lived for more than 30 years. ”The reason I came to Illinois was because Chicago was the center of consumer electronics industry at the time,” he said. ”But now, Japan has taken the lead.”
Bardeen grew up in an academic family in Madison, Wis. His father, Charles Bardeen, was dean of the medical school at the University of Wisconsin. His mother, Althea, was an artist. She used flash cards to teach Bardeen arithmetic and encouraged him to be a scientist. She died of breast cancer when he was 12.
As a boy, Bardeen set up a laboratory in the basement to conduct electrical experiments and piece together radios. When Bardeen finished the 3d grade, he skipped right to the 7th grade. He won a high school algebra contest at age 10.
He attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Princeton University to study electrical engineering and physics, then did research at Harvard. He headed a research group in the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C., during World War II to design submarines that would elude German mines and torpedoes.
William Shockley recruited Bardeen to work for Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1945. The Bell telephone company had launched a research effort to build a smaller and more powerful device that would replace the vacuum tube. Vacuum tubes amplified electrical signals, but they needed time to warm up, they were bulky, and they burned out like light bulbs.
The early experiments at Bell Laboratories had been primitive. Researchers remember how Shockley had used a pair of very dull scissors to snip out a piece of copper mesh from an old back porch screen, then stuck two copper wires onto the jagged mesh with chewing gum.
”So here he had the three elements of a transistor, these two wires and the copper screen,” said Bell researcher Dean Woolridge, according to a paper published in Historical Studies in the Physical Science. ”Of course, he was orders of magnitude away from anything that would work.”
Researchers were attempting to control the flow of electrons through a crystal made of germanium. Bardeen saw that the early Bell experiments didn`t work because electrons were trapped on the surface of the crystal. After two years of experiments, Bardeen and Bell researcher Walter Brattain created the first transistor.
On Dec. 23, 1947, it amplified a human voice during a secret demonstration in Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill-an achievement that would later win Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley the Nobel Prize.
Laser circuits
Researchers began to shrink transistors and place them on ”chips” made of silicon crystal. These new transistors were called ”integrated circuits,” and the number of transistors on a standard chip doubled every year. The cost of a chip is still $2, but it now has about 4 million transistors packed on it.
Scientists now design integrated circuits so small and complex that they exploit the wave nature of an electron. Wire is being replaced with tiny lasers that shoot streams of information and flip switches at the speed of light.
”The size of chip components depends on the wavelength of light,”
Bardeen said. ”The next generation of chips will use ultraviolet light, which has an even shorter wavelength.”
Shockley, who died in August, left Bell Labs in 1955. In an abandoned army barracks in Palo Alto, he started a company to manufacture silicon transistors out of which grew dozens of electronics companies in what is now known as Silicon Valley, an area stretching 50 miles, from San Francisco to San Jose.
Shockley became infamous when he declared that blacks scored lower than whites on IQ tests because of genetic inferiority. He feared mankind would suffer from ”retrogressive evolution” and he suggested paying blacks to be voluntarily sterilized. He also donated sperm to a Nobel Prize sperm bank in hopes of creating a super race.
”Shockley thought the IQ problem was more important than the transistor,” Bardeen said. ”It is unfortunate. He was a very brilliant man. If he`d stuck to physics instead of being sidetracked, he might have contributed more.”
In 1951, Bardeen accepted a joint appointment in physics and electrical engineering at the University of Illinois, where he taught graduate classes in transistor technology. His next project was superconductivity, one of the most challenging problems of the second half of the 20th Century.
Scientists had known of the superconductor phenomenon since 1911: Under low temperatures, electrons can flow through a metal smoothly and without resistance. But no one knew why. Physicists around the world were competing to find an explanation.
In 1955, Bardeen teamed up with one of his graduate students, Robert Schrieffer, and a research fellow, Leon Cooper, to develop a theory for superconductivity.
”My guess is that Bardeen would have solved the problem single-handedly, but Cooper and I had the good fortune to be there at the right time,” said Schrieffer, now a physics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. ”I had no idea how to go about it, and Cooper wasn`t even in the same field of physics at the time.”
Most scientists reach their creative peaks in their 20s, but Bardeen was not one of them, said Cooper, now a physics professor at Brown University.
The superconductivity project, he said, ”was an incredibly intense, productive period. ”It was delirium and agony, like running a marathon. Looking back, I can`t believe how hard we worked.”
Cooper`s brain was jogging 24 hours a day; electrons flickered in his dreams, and he would wake up to jot down ideas. Meanwhile, Bardeen scribbled formulas and equations in the basement of his home, his son Bill remembered. Scrieffer was so excited that sometimes he couldn`t sleep at all. The three men ran back and forth between their offices and called each other in the middle of the night.
One morning in 1956, Bardeen was scrambling eggs when the radio announced that he had won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the transistor. He had been so caught up in the superconductivity research he was unaware that it was time for the prizes to be announced. ”He dropped the frying pan and we ran upstairs to wake up Mom,” Bardeen`s daughter, Betsy, said.
A `super` solution
After the thrill of winning a Nobel Prize wore off, Bardeen went back down to the basement. ”He was so deeply involved in superconductivity he was reluctant to go to Stockholm for the ceremony,” his daughter said. ”He considered his research on superconductors as his major life contribution, more important than the transistor.”
By this time the problem was so difficult Schrieffer was exhausted. ”I was ready to give up, but Bardeen begged me to please hang on for a few more months,” he recounted. Schrieffer did, and in January 1957, was hit by an idea while riding in a subway car in New York City.
”That`s the solution!” Bardeen said when Schrieffer returned to Urbana. ”I know that`s the answer!” Within a few minutes, Bardeen gave Schrieffer and Cooper an outline of the tasks that had to be done.
Within the three men, there had been an intellectual coil, wound and ready to spring. Schrieffer`s insight released their pent-up frustration, and they solved the problem in 13 days. Not only did they explain features of superconductivity observed in the past 50 years, they made predictions that later were proven experimentally.
Zero resistance to electricity occurs only under very low temperatures, but scientists now are trying to develop new chemical materials that will superconduct at room temperature.
A room temperature superconductor would make the machines of science-fiction a reality: trains pushed on a cushion of air by superconducting magnets, medical devices so sensitive to the magnetic field they can measure brain waves and blood iron for early detection of disease, electric-powered cars and faster supercomputers.
Golf ball radio
Bardeen knew Cooper and Schrieffer deserved a Nobel Prize, but he also knew the Nobel Prize committee had never before given a man two awards in the same field. In 1972 it broke tradition and awarded Cooper, Schrieffer and Bardeen the Nobel Prize in physics. ”They might have gotten it sooner if it hadn`t been for me,” Bardeen said.
Modesty is one of the attributes that makes Bardeen so popular among many scientists. U. of I. physicist Paul Handler remembers that people were
”falling over themselves” to throw Bardeen a big party for his 60th birthday. Sony engineers-who knew Bardeen loved to play golf-spent six months to making a transistor radio the exact size of a golf ball for Bardeen`s birthday gift.
Bardeen also doesn`t force his ideas on others, Holonyak said. ”Shockley felt your ideas didn`t matter, only his did. But Bardeen wouldn`t suppress you; he`d try to help you. He thinks everyone has something worthwhile to contribute.”
Bardeen`s children-James, William and Betsy-remember that their father never pushed them into science. He simply bought them books about physics, history, archeology and other academic subjects. James became fascinated with dinosaurs, evolution and geology. Betsy loved to read about archeological digs. All three of the Bardeen children went to University High School in Urbana.
James, 51, is now a professor of astrophysics at the University of Washington at Seattle. William, 48, is head of the theoretical physics department at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at Batavia. Betsy, 45, is a computer systems analyst and is married to Thomas Greytak, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His academic family
Bardeen`s graduate students are often called Bardeen`s ”academic children.” Many have stayed at the University of Illinois and made their own marks in the scientific world.
Holonyak, Bardeen`s first graduate student, later invented the light-emitting diode used in digital watches and pocket calculators. Today his lab is filled with petri dishes in which crystals are growing, experiments combining chemistry and physics to create new materials for smaller and even speedier generations of computers.
Karl Hess, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and another of Bardeen`s ”academic sons,” is now an associate director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Among research projects there are experiments with neuronetworks, coding information on light to simulate human intelligence.
Hess is trying to use the wavelike nature of electrons to design a circuit so small it can store all the information of the Library of Congress on a chip no bigger than a fingernail.
Bardeen was the man who started it all, Hess said. He calls Bardeen the
”father of the silicon age” and one of the greatest scientists of the century, ”if not the millenium.”
”He helped and coached all of us at the U. of I. and made us go back to the fountain of youth and basic science,” Hess said. ”Even now, in his eighties, he`s still thinks faster than anyone I know.”
