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Article: Dr. Shockley and Mr. Hyde. (racist attitude of transistor pioneer William Shockley)
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- August 28, 1989
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1989 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The world gobbled the fruit of William Shockley's young mind. Portable radios, solid-state TV's, pocket calculators and personal computers all were made possible by his pathfinding work in transistors. The world awarded him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956 and called him this century's greatest electronics pioneer. But Shockley cared little for his role in that invention. His true life's work, the obsession that sustained him up to a few days before he died August 12 at 79, made him a pariah in the scientific community.
William Shockley was a racist. With the same grit that carried him and his team of scientists past failure after failure to the ...