Walter Houser Brattain (1902-87), American physicist and Nobel laureate, born in Xiamen (Amoy), China. After working as a physicist in the radio division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in 1929 he joined the staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories. While working at Bell, Brattain and the American physicists William Shockley and John Bardeen developed a small electronic device called the transistor. First announced in 1948, the transistor was perfected by 1952 for commercial use in portable radios, hearing aids, and other devices. For his work on semiconductors and discovery of the transistor effect, Brattain shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics with Shockley and Bardeen.