Walter Houser Brattain was born in in Amoy, China on February 10, 1902. His father was Ross R. Brattain, a teacher of science and math, his mother was Ottilie Houser.
By 1903, the Brattains were back in Washington. Walter spent most of his youth on a large cattle ranch just south of the Canadian border. When he wasn't doing school work, Walter had little time for anything besides helping out on the ranch. He was a cowboy.
In the autumn of 1920, Walter entered Whitman College and received a B.S. degree there in 1924. He claimed he majored in physics and math because they were the only subjects he was good at! He attended college at a turning point in American science, when physics was being transformed. Older students would have been expected to travel to Europe for a first-class physics education, but Walter was in the first wave of those who could do just as well in the US. Encouraged by his professor, Benjamin Brown, to continue his studies, Walter went on to the University of Oregon for his Masters, receiving his M.A. in 1926 and then on to the University of Minnesota for a Ph.D. which he attained in 1929. Walters' first job out of graduate school was at the National Bureau of Standards as a radio engineer. After a year there he wanted to get back to physics. At an American Physical Society meeting he was about to ask his thesis advisor, John Tate, for help, but, before he said anything, Tate introduced him to Joseph Becker of Bell Labs. "By the way, Becker is looking for a man," he said, and Walter quickly responded, "I'm interested!" Becker asked for only one qualification: he wanted to make sure that Walter was the kind of guy who'd stand up to his superiors when necessary. Walter, raised on a working ranch with a rifle in his saddle bag to shoot rattlesnakes, laughed. On August 1, 1929, Walter moved to Becker's lab in New York City.
In 1935 Walter married Dr. Keren (Gilmore) Walter; they had one son, William Gilmore Brattain.
Walters' concerns at Bell Laboratories in the years before World War II were first in the surface physics of tungsten and later in the surfaces of the semiconductors cuprous oxide and silicon. Working with Becker, Walter spent most of his time studying copper-oxide rectifiers. The pair thought they might be able to make an amplifier by putting a tiny metal grid in the middle of the device, similar to the design of vacuum tubes. Working with crystals eventually paid off. On March 6 1940, Walter and Becker were called into the office of Bells' President, Mervin Kelly. There they saw Russell Ohls' mysterious crystal that increased voltage whenever light was flashed on it. It turned out to be a very crude p-n junction, but no one knew it at the time. Walter, who at first thought it was a practical joke, gave a light-hearted explanation that electrical current was being generated at a barrier inside. That theory turned out to be correct and Kelly was suitably impressed.
During World War II Walter devoted his time to developing methods of submarine detection under a contract with the National Defense Research Council at Columbia University.
Walter returned to Bell Labs after the war to find Kelly was reorganising the researchers. Walter was assigned to a new solid state group with Stanley Morgan and William Shockley at the head. John Bardeen, a friend of Walters' brother Robert, joined the group as well. Bardeens' skill was in theory, while Walters' was in experimenting. The two men soon learned to work together beautifully — Bardeen would watch Walter conduct an experiment and then offer hypotheses about the results.
The close relationship between Walter and Bardeen paid off in what has become known as the "Miracle Month". For four weeks the two men came up with one great idea after another. Over the month they built several devices, each one a little better than the last, and it all came together on Tuesday, December 16. Walter sat down at their latest attempt to build an amplifier. He turned on the voltage and for once everything seemed to work just right. "This thing's got gain!" Walter said to no one in particular. That meant amplification, the new transistor worked!.
After the point-contact transistor was built, a clash of personalities got the better of what had been a well-tuned research group. The fight was over just how much credit Shockley would receive. He was the team leader, but he worked on his own research at home and left Bardeen and Walter alone. A famous company publicity photo of the three men (right) shows how skewed the relationships were: Shockley sat at center stage in front of the microscope as if he had done the critical experiments. It was Walters' laboratory bench and Walters' equipment, but Walter stood behind his boss (on the right, leaning forward), as if Shockley had really done the work. In fact the management at Bell Labs had insisted that Shockley appear in every publicity picture, as he was the head of the group he deserved to be there, the laboratory management felt. But they kept his name off the patent. That did not make Walter or Bardeen feel any better about Shockley. Later in life, Walter would say to people who knew him well that he really hated that photo.
At 7 AM on Thursday, November 1 1956, Walter was at home when he got a phone call from a reporter. He had been awarded the Nobel Prize for the invention of the transistor. He was soon swamped by the media. Later that morning he attended a meeting in the labs' Murray Hill auditorium. As he walked into the room everyone spontaneously stood up and began to clap, it brought tears to his eyes. Later he wrote: "What happened there is a matter of record, except possibly the extreme emotion that one feels on receiving the acclamation of one's colleagues and friends of years, knowing full well that one could not have accomplished the work he had done without them, and that it was really only a stroke of luck that it was he and not one of them."
Over the next few years, Walter continued to work in Shockleys' transistor group, but usually wasn't invited to work on the most exciting research. He soon stopped reporting to Shockley of his own accord, eventually demanding that he be transferred to another group altogether. Much happier away from Shockley, Walter remained at Bell until he retired in 1967.
In 1958 Walter married Mrs. Emma Jane (Kirsch) Miller (Karen had died earlier). They lived in Summit, New Jersey, near the Murray Hill laboratory of Bell Telephone Laboratories.
After he retired from Bell Labs Walter moved back to Walla Walla, Washington, to teach at his alma mater, Whitman College. He worked on biophysics, taught a physics course for non-science majors, and listened to the music being played on campus too loudly thanks to his invention. "The only regret I have about the transistor is its use for rock and roll," he was heard to say, more than once!
Walter Houser Brattain died in Seattle, Washington, of Alzheimers' disease at the age of 85 on October 13, 1987.