Walter Houser Brattain Walter Houser Brattain Walter Houser Brattain (; February 10, 1902 – October 13, 1987) was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Brattain devoted much of his life to research on surface states. Walter Brattain was born in Xiamen, Fujian, China, to American parents Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser Brattain. Ross R. Brattain was a teacher at the Ting-Wen Institute, a private school for Chinese boys. Both parents were graduates of Whitman
Alfred Nobel of his wealth in trust, in order to fund the awards that would become known as the Nobel Prizes. He is buried in Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm. Through baptism and confirmation Alfred Nobel was Lutheran and during his Paris years he regularly attended the Church of Sweden Abroad, led by pastor Nathan Söderblom, who would in 1930 also be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. However, he became an agnostic at youth and was an atheist later in life. Nobel travelled for much of his business life, maintaining companies in various countries in Europe and North America and keeping