A very detailed and compelling story. ( )

Dry in parts, but overall interesting. This is the story of a gifted physicist from MIT who collaborated with two others to invent the transistor. It is definitely a "warts-and-all" tale; as Shockley was deeply flawed, both in his arrogance (trying to take entire credit for the transistor, when it was clearly a group effort), and in his racism which became more evident later in life. Aside from Shockley's personal tale, it is interesting that he founded the first tech company in collaboration with Stanford U. in Palo Alto- making him, for all his flaws, the "grandfather of Silicon Valley". Due to his heavy-handed management style, the company didn't last long, but two of his senior scientists on staff went on to found multibillion dollar chip manufacturer 'Intel". ( )

If there's a poster child for the concept of social intelligence than William Shockley was that man. There seems to be little other explanation for the deficiencies that led to the self-destruction of a glittering career that peaked with the winning of the Nobel Prize and then spiraled down into being a freak show, as Shockley pursued his obsession with eugenics to the point of rejecting his own children as being unworthy of him; never mind the racialist slant of his crusade for public attention.

While most readers are going to be particularly interested in either Shockley the Scientist or Shockley the Sensationalist, perhaps the most telling section is that dealing with Shockley the Businessman, and how his misplaced elitism, his social ineptitude, and his inability to learn from his mistakes were played out in an arena where responsibility could not be displaced; not that Shockley didn't try. Little could dent Shockley's certainty of his own self-importance, to the point that one has to wonder whether his personality was a result of his eccentric upbringing or of actual mental illness. Shurkin is probably wise to leave this question to his readers, which is more mercy than Shockley would have displayed. ( )

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. ( )