William W. Happ

William Wolfgang Happ (1919 – 1998) was a physicist, electrical engineer, and pioneer in semiconductors. He was one of the first four recruits by William Shockley to help develop technologies at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.

Early life

William Happ was born in 1919 in a town on the border of Poland and Germany. While still a boy, his father, a German-Jewish lawyer, was disbarred by the Nazi regime. The family attempted to emigrate to the United States but were unsuccessful. William was then sent to live in Italy (ten years later, his family was sent to Auschwitz where they perished). Upon graduating from school in 1938, he purchased a fake passport which allowed him to travel to London, where he began studying engineering. At the outbreak of World War II, Happ attempted to enlist in the British Army, however the draft board told him to remain in school. Two days before he would take his final exams, the British government arrested and imprisoned him, believing his connections to Germany and Italy suspicious. After two months, he was sent to Canada with a large number of others for Canada to use as a bargaining chip in the return of their own POWs in Europe; Britain only had 500 German POWs, so their numbers were augmented with many like Happ- people as young as 14 or as old as 70, many of them Jews, most virulent anti-Nazis, being held under various unproven suspicions.