Tech Time Warp: John Bardeen leaves Bell Labs

Even technology giants have personality conflicts at work — and sometimes a new opportunity leads to even greater achievements, like a second Nobel Prize in Physics.

That’s an extreme example, but it’s a reminder that even brilliant innovators face workplace challenges. Seventy-five years ago today, on July 24, 1951, Bardeen notified the team at AT&T Bell Laboratories that he was leaving the research facility. While at Bell Labs, Bardeen worked with fellow researcher Walter Brattain to develop the point-contact transistor, which replaced vacuum tubes and helped make computers smaller, more powerful, and more practical. Publicly announced in 1948, the Bell transistor was made of germanium. Later work at Texas Instruments introduced the less expensive, more durable silicon transistor, giving rise to the term “Silicon Valley.”

Recognition and rising tensions

This groundbreaking achievement came with a story that was difficult for Bardeen to accept. Bell Labs promoted the leadership role of his colleague William Shockley so heavily that the September 1948 cover of Electronics magazine showed Shockley at a workbench while Bardeen and Brattain looked on from behind. In reality, Bardeen and Brattain had carried out the work that proved one of Shockley’s theories. Tensions continued to build until Bardeen ultimately decided to leave Bell Labs.

A second Nobel Prize and a lasting legacy

Bardeen joined the University of Illinois, where, in 1957, he and colleagues Leon Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer developed the theory of superconductivity. In 1972, the trio received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) theory. It was a fitting addition to the Nobel Prize Bardeen had already received in 1956 alongside Brattain and Shockley. To this day, Bardeen remains the only person to win the Nobel Prize in Physics twice.

As for Shockley, he eventually left Bell Labs as well. He founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, whose culture and influence later inspired Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore to establish Intel.