Walter Houser Brattain

Walter Houser Brattain (February 10, 1902 – October 13, 1987) was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the transistor. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. He devoted much of his life to research on surface states.

Walter Houser Brattain was born to American parents Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser on 10 February 1902, in Xiamen, China. His father was a teacher there. He earned a bachelor's degree from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington in 1924, a master's degree from the University of Oregon in Eugene, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Brattain was a resident of Summit, New Jersey. He moved to Seattle, Washington, in the 1970s where he lived until his death. He died on October 13, 1987 in a nursing home in Seattle, Washington from Alzheimer's Disease.