William Shockley in His Own Words
The collected papers of a warrior against dogma.
Reviewed by Thomas Jackson, American Renaissance
20 August 2010
William Bradford Shockley was, at the time of his death in 1989, perhaps the most reviled man in America. His public image, created by a relentlessly hostile press, was that of a mad scientist, firmly in the service of evil. His crime was not merely to have publicized unacceptable views on race, intelligence, and genetics, but to have lent them the prestige of a Nobel laureate in physics.
Shockley on Eugenics and Race, edited by Dr. Roger Pearson, is a collection of Dr. Shockley’s papers written from 1965 to 1975. This was the very decade during which leftist-egalitarian thinking was tightening its grip on the country. It is hazardous enough today to preach heresy on the subject of race and intelligence, but to have done so when Dr. Shockley was most active was to court assassination.
It was only due to Dr. Shockley’s prominence as a scientist that he was able to get a hearing at all. After receiving his Nobel prize in 1956 for leading the team that invented the transistor, Dr. Shockley founded one of the first high-technology companies in Silicon Valley and was appointed a professor at Stanford University. When, in 1965, he began to preach eugenic heresies, his views hit the country like a bomb.
