William Shockley was born in London. He grew up in California, living in Palo Alto and California. He then enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his Ph.D. in solid-state physics in 1932. He attended Cal Tech, and in 1936 , he joined Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. During World War II, he served as director of research for the Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group of the US Navy.
After the war, he returned to Bell Labs as head of their transistor research department. In 1955, he left Bell Labs to form his own company, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories, which played a vital role in the development of the electronics industry in the giant it is today. His former employees later went on to invent the integrated circuit and also founded Intel, the world's largest microprocessor company. Shockley later became a distinguished professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.