TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it... That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That�s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Walter H. Brattain Quotes

Thumbnail of Walter H. Brattain (source)
Walter H. Brattain
(10 Feb 1902 - 13 Oct 1987)

American physicist who shared (with John Bardeen and William B. Shockley) the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for investigating semiconductors (materials of which transistors are made) and for the development of the transistor.


Science Quotes by Walter H. Brattain (2 quotes)

I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reactions at a surface.
— Walter H. Brattain
'Surface properties of semiconductors', Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1956). In Nobel Lectures, Physics 1942-1962 (1967), 377.
Science quotes on:  |  Active (80)  |  Biology (232)  |  Catalysis (7)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemical Reaction (17)  |  Chemical Reactions (13)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Circuit (29)  |  Concern (239)  |  Electronics (21)  |  Element (322)  |  Emphasis (18)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Importance (299)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Involve (93)  |  Live (650)  |  Most (1728)  |  Occur (151)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Planet (402)  |  Plant (320)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Start (237)  |  Sugar (26)  |  Sunlight (29)  |  Surface (223)  |  Useful (260)

The transistor came about because fundamental knowledge had developed to a stage where human minds could understand phenomena that had been observed for a long time. In the case of a device with such important consequences to technology, it is noteworthy that a breakthrough came from work dedicated to the understanding of fundamental physical phenomena, rather than the cut-and-try method of producing a useful device.
— Walter H. Brattain
In 'Discovery of the Transistor Effect: One Researcher’s Personal Account', Adventures in Experimental Physics (1976), 5, 3-13. As quoted and partially cited in Leon M. Lederman, 'Physics and Development', collected in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Citation complete in footnotes of other articles found online.
Science quotes on:  |  Breakthrough (18)  |  Consequence (220)  |  Dedicate (12)  |  Develop (278)  |  Device (71)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Important (229)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Method (531)  |  Noteworthy (4)  |  Observe (179)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Physical (518)  |  Produce (117)  |  Stage (152)  |  Technology (281)  |  Transistor (6)  |  Understand (648)  |  Useful (260)  |  Work (1402)



Quotes by others about Walter H. Brattain (2)

I can’t work well under the conditions at Bell Labs. Walter [Brattain] and I are looking at a few questions relating to point-contact transistors, but [William] Shockley keeps all the interesting problems for himself.
From conversation with Frederick Seitz as quoted in Lillian Hoddeson, 'John Bardeen: A Place to Win Two Nobel Prizes and Make a Hole in One', collected in Lillian Hoddeson (ed.), No Boundaries: University of Illinois Vignettes (2004), Chap. 16, 242.
Science quotes on:  |  Bell (35)  |  Bell Laboratories (3)  |  Condition (362)  |  Contact (66)  |  Himself (461)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Keep (104)  |  Looking (191)  |  Point (584)  |  Problem (731)  |  Question (649)  |  Relate (26)  |  William B. Shockley (4)  |  Transistor (6)  |  Work (1402)

On the morning of 1 November 1956 the US physicist John Bardeen dropped the frying-pan of eggs that he was cooking for breakfast, scattering its contents on the kitchen floor. He had just heard that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics along with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for their invention of the transistor. That evening Bardeen was startled again, this time by a parade of his colleagues from the University of Illinois marching to the door of his home bearing champagne and singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.
In Abstract for 'John Bardeen: An Extraordinary Physicist', Physics World (2008), 21, No. 4, 22.
Science quotes on:  |  John Bardeen (6)  |  Biography (254)  |  Breakfast (10)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Cook (20)  |  Cooking (12)  |  Door (94)  |  Drop (77)  |  Dropped (17)  |  Egg (71)  |  Fellow (88)  |  Good (906)  |  Hear (144)  |  Home (184)  |  Invention (400)  |  Kitchen (14)  |  Morning (98)  |  Nobel Prize (42)  |  Parade (3)  |  Physic (515)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Physics (564)  |  Scattering (4)  |  William B. Shockley (4)  |  Sing (29)  |  Singing (19)  |  Time (1911)  |  Transistor (6)  |  University (130)  |  Win (53)


See also:
  • 10 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Brattain's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.