University of Wisconsin alum created the first working transistor 70 years ago

When John Bardeen returned home from work at Bell Telephone Laboratories on Dec. 16, 1947, he told his wife, "We discovered something today." 

If you're reading this story on a cellphone, tablet or laptop, the technology in your hand is thanks to the University of Wisconsin alum's startling invention 70 years ago Saturday. 

Bardeen won a Nobel Prize in 1956 in physics for dreaming up the first working transistor, revolutionizing modern-day electronics. 

Bardeen was not one to toot his own horn. In fact, the day the modest, self-effacing Madison native made his breakthrough, he mentioned it to his wife in an offhand comment. 

"If it weren't for the transistor we wouldn't have any of the modern electronics today — no laptop computers, no cellphones. Just about any modern device you can think of wouldn't exist without John’s work," said Tod Pritchard, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association.

The alumni association included Bardeen in its new Alumni Park, which opened in October and features notable Badgers and their groundbreaking contributions. 

"For decades, he's been revered within the scientific community, but the general public doesn't know much about his work — which is amazing because so much of his work impacts our daily lives," Pritchard said.

Tiny transistors replaced fragile, bulky vacuum tubes that made amplification possible in televisions and radios and paved the way for the digital age. 

Bardeen, the son of the University of Wisconsin's first medical school dean, was a prodigy. He skipped so many grades, he was an eighth-grader at the age of 9. At UW-Madison, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1928 and a master's in electrical engineering the following year. 

He shared his 1956 Nobel with two others from Bell Labs, Walter Brattain and William Shockley. At the ceremony, the king of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf, asked him why his children did not come to the ceremony and Bardeen assured him they would the next time he won a Nobel. 

Which he did. 

Bardeen received a second Nobel Prize in 1972, with Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer, for explaining superconductivity — that certain metals can conduct electrical current at temperatures close to absolute zero. That theory led to magnetic resonance imaging for medical diagnoses.

He's the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in physics.

"That we don't really know about him is something we're trying to change with this anniversary," said Pritchard. 

Bardeen's photo and an explanation of his achievements are included on a plaque at the alumni park located between the Red Gym and Memorial Union in Madison.

"It's ironic that he grew up literally a couple hundred feet away from where the park is where we honor his life and work," Pritchard said.

One year before he died in Boston in 1991 at the age of 82, Bardeen appeared in Life Magazine's list of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century. He and his wife, Jane, are buried in Madison.