How does Brattain's work relate to modern electronics?
Every modern electronic device—your smartphone, your laptop, your car's computer—traces back to that first point-contact transistor. The principles we discovered about surface states and carrier injection are still at the heart of how transistors work today, even though they're now microscopic and made of silicon. My emphasis on surfaces is more relevant than ever: in modern chips, the performance depends critically on the interfaces between materials, like the gate oxide and the silicon channel. Engineers still battle surface states, just like we did with germanium. And my hands-on philosophy—test, measure, iterate—is exactly how they develop new materials like gallium nitride or graphene. You can't think your way to a better transistor; you have to build it and see what happens. That's the lesson that keeps on giving.
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