Recollections From The Early Years of Solid‐State Physics

APR 01, 1992

Bardeen’s devotion to solid‐state physics began in the mid‐1930s, when he was a graduate student and the field was young. By 1951 he had helped to discover the transistor and had set the stage for his later studies of superconductivity.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881335

Conyers Herring

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References

1. For Bardeen’s own account of his graduate student and postdoctoral years see J. Bardeen, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 371, 77 (1980).
2. E. Wigner, F. Seitz, Phys. Rev. 43, 804 (1933); https://doi.org/PHRVAO
E. Wigner, F. Seitz, 46, 509 (1934).
3. E. Wigner, J. Bardeen, Phys. Rev. 48, 84 (1935).
4. J. Bardeen, Phys. Rev. 49, 653 (1936).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
5. For some modern perspectives on the jellium surface problem see, for example, V. Sahni, Surf. Sci. 213, 226 (1989); https://doi.org/SUSCAS
E. Krotscheck, W. Kohn, Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 862 (1986).https://doi.org/PRLTAO
6. P. Hohenberg, W. Kohn, Phys. Rev. 136, B864 (1964).
7. J. Bardeen, J. Chem. Phys. 6, 367 (1938).https://doi.org/JCPSA6
8. J. Bardeen, Phys. Rev. 52, 688 (1937).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
9. J. Bardeen, Phys. Rev. 51, 799 (1937). https://doi.org/PHRVAO
J. Bardeen, E. Feenberg, Phys. Rev. 54, 809 (1938).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
10. J. Bardeen, Phys. Rev. 58, 727 (1940).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
11. F. London, H. London, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 149, 71 (1935).
12. D. Shoenberg, Superconductivity, Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, England (1935).
13. For detailed retrospective accounts of the experiments and analyses leading to the point‐contact transistor, see J. Bardeen, in The Nobel Lectures 1942–62, Nobel Foundation, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1964), p. 313,
and the chapters by W. Brattain and W. Shockley in the same volume; C. Weiner, IEEE Spectrum, January 1973, p. 24;
L. Hoddeson, Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci. 12, 41 (1981).
14. J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain, Phys. Rev. 74, 230, 231 (1948); https://doi.org/PHRVAO
J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain, 75, 1208 (1949).
15. E. Maxwell, Phys. Rev. 78, 477 (1950).
C. A. Reynolds, B. Serin, W. H. Wright, L. B. Nesbitt, Phys. Rev. 78, 487 (1950).https://doi.org/PHRVAO
16. For a summary account of these pre‐BCS theories, see J. Bardeen, Rev. Mod. Phys. 23, 263 (1957),
and especially Handbuch der Physik, vol. 15, Springer‐Verlag, Berlin (1956), p. 274.

More about the authors

Conyers Herring, Stanford University.