Early Life and Education
He was born to Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser in Amoy, China on February 10, 1902 and spent the early part of his life in Springfield, Oregon where an elementary school is named in his honor, and Tonasket, Washington in the United States. He was raised in Tonasket, Washington on a cattle ranch owned by his parents, and earned his B.A. degree in physics and mathematics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Brattain earned that degree in 1924 and an M.A. degree from the University of Oregon in 1926. He then moved eastward, taking his Ph.D. degree in physics at the University of Minnesota in 1929. Brattain's advisor was John T. Tate Sr., and his thesis was on electron impact in mercury vapor. In 1928 and 1929 he worked at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., and in 1929 was hired by Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Brattain's 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. During World War II Brattain devoted his time to developing methods of submarine detection under a contract with the National Defense Research Council at Columbia University.
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