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BOOKS & ARTS NATURE|Vol 442|10 August 2006 Shockley attributes the invention of the tran- soon morphed into his much-sensationalized sistor to Bardeen and Brattain, and to them NEW IN PAPERBACK claim that African-Americans are statistically alone. Bardeen had the key idea of minority Warped Passages: Unravelling the inferior in intelligence to those of European carrier injection that made amplification pos- Universe’s Hidden Dimensions descent. sible, and Brattain had the skills to put the con- by Lisa Randall (Penguin, £8.99) Had Shockley not been a Nobel laureate, his tacts close together. Yet without Shockley’s “The book’s peg — the possible existence of assertions would probably have been ignored. participation and leadership, it is equally clear extra dimensions in space — is easy enough to But a Nobel prize confers a ‘bully pulpit’, along that the invention would not have occurred as explain. But motivating the conjecture requires with the perception, by people in general and soon as it did, and his later independent inven- a grand tour of some of the toughest and most the press in particular, of being an expert in tion of the junction transistor was to emerge as abstract topics in science.” Paul Davies, Nature everything. However, as the physicist and the most practical embodiment of the device 435,1161–1162 (2005). pundit Bob Park has observed, “A Nobel prize for the next decade. in physics is not an inoculation against silly Almost immediately after the discovery of Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: A Darwinian behaviour,” and there are plenty of examples to the point-contact transistor, Shockley dissoci- Look at Literature back that up. ated himself from many of his colleagues at by David P. Barash & Nanelle R. Barash With the discovery of DNA, physics met Bell Labs, and eventually became disenchanted (Delta/Bantam Dell, $14) genetics, and the full impact of their engage- with the institution itself. Shurkin hints that “Where most such books rely on scholarly ment is just beginning to be glimpsed. If some- this was the result of jealousy at not being fully papers and monographs to ground the various day a gene sequence is found that determines involved in the final, crucial point-contact points within a shared and robust scientific intelligence, just as there are sequences for transistor experiments, and frustration at not knowledge [of evolutionary biology], these Tay-Sachs disease or thalassaemia, what shall progressing rapidly up the laboratory man- authors use literature sources as references.” we do about it? Will we have a future, as agement chain. He had, in the words of his Michel Raymond, Nature435,28 (2005). depicted in the film Gattaca, in which parents employees, an “unusual” management style. can selectively tailor the genetic structure of Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations For much of the early 1950s, Shockley was their children? If most choose intelligence by W.F. Bynum & Roy Porter (Oxford on leave from Bell Labs. His time was divided as the dominant gene for their offspring, we University Press, £10.99) between teaching at Caltech and continuing to might end up with a world full of Shockleys. explore the statistical methods he introduced Hopefully, this brave new world will have its as a consultant to the military to help optimize Semiconductor had folded. Seven years later, share of those with the grace under pressure naval and air-force tactical procedures in the two of the eight, Robert Noyce and Gordon of Tiger Woods, the spine-tingling voice of Second World War. He adapted operations Moore, with financial help from the other six, Luciano Pavarotti, and the flashing fingers of research techniques with the objective of founded Intel. rock guitarist Angus Young. maximizing damage to the enemy with the Shockley’s consolation prize was a profes- Variety is indeed the spice of life. ■ least expenditure in blood and money on his sorship at Stanford, which gave him time to Paul Grant is an IBM research staff member own side, a cost–benefit approach to conduct- pursue his fascination with the possible connec- emeritus and is currently visiting scholar in applied ing warfare. tion between heredity and intelligence. This physics at Stanford University in California. Shockley’s important wartime contributions have remained largely unknown, and Shurkin provides a rare focus on them. Unlike his better- publicized peers on the Manhattan Project and at MIT’s Radiation Laboratory, Shockley Making sense of autism was virtually on the battlefield and his recom- mendations had almost immediate effect. He Autism, Brain, and Environment terms “new phase autism”. He recognizes the was undoubtedly responsible for preventing by Richard Lathe overwhelming evidence that autism is among many Allied casualties. He seemed to thrive Jessica Kingsley: 2006. 288 pp. the most heritable of psychiatric disorders, but in a leadership role within the command-and- £15.99, $24.95 argues for a two-hit mechanism, with genetic control military culture. In some bizarre sense, Understanding Autism: From Basic susceptibility and environmental factors com- he may have been cast in the mould of George Neuroscience to Treatment bining to produce an ASD. His book is a Patton, Viscount Montgomery and Ulysses S. edited by Steven O. Moldin & clearly and accessibly written account of his Grant — superb leaders of men in war, yet John L. R. Rubenstein proposal that environmental poisons, includ- mostly dismal failures in times of peace. CRC Press: 2006. 526 pp. £92, $159.95 ing heavy metals, interact with genetic vulner- After several years searching for an alter- ability to cause damage to the limbic brain native career, Shockley finally left Bell Labs Francesca Happé system and to physiological systems, includ- in 1956, returning to California to start the Are we witnessing an autism epidemic? The ing the gut and the immune system, resulting Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, with current prevalence estimates for autism, and in autism. financial backing from the industrialist Arnold for the wider range of autism spectrum disor- This is a story that many readers will find Beckman. Once more, Shockley displayed an ders (ASDs), are around ten times greater than plausible, and which Lathe supports with extraordinary gift for recruiting talent, along estimates from studies in the 1980s and 90s. some good synthesis of established autism with total incompetence in managing them. About 0.6% of the population is thought to research. It is perhaps not surprising that he Unlike Kelly, who gave his stable of thorough- have an ASD, diagnosed on the basis of quali- also cites less solid, unpublished research to breds their head, Shockley attempted to tative impairments in social interaction and support the hypothesis, nor that the limita- micromanage, forcing his agenda on his new communication, with restricted and repetitive tions of such research, such as the lack of hires, whose ideas were in fact much better interests and activities. appropriate control groups, are little discussed. than his own. In 1957, Shockley’s staff revolted, The claim that cases of ASD are on the But this is, overall, a scholarly book providing with eight — the ‘traitorous eight’ — resigning increase is the first step in Richard Lathe’s a possible explanation of autism. It will be of en masse. They were reunited by the inventor argument in Autism, Brain, and Environment. interest to parents as well as professionals. and financier Sherman Fairchild, and Fairchild Based on the apparent increase, Lathe argues Lathe’s story stands in marked contrast to Semiconductor was born. By 1961, Shockley for an environmental explanation for what he Understanding Autism, a volume edited by 632 ©2006 Nature PublishingGroup.

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