and unhappy in his life. He reportedly tried playing Russian roulette as part of an attempted suicide. Death Shockley died of prostate cancer in 1989 at the age of 79. At the time of his death, he was estranged from most of his friends and family, except his second wife, the former Emmy Lanning (1913–2007). His children reportedly learned of his death by reading his obituary in the newspaper. Shockley is interred at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California. Honors National Medal of Merit, for his war work in 1946. Comstock Prize in Physics of the National Academy of Sciences in 1953. First recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize of the American Physical Society in 1953. Co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, along with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. In his Nobel lecture, he gave full credit to Brattain and Bardeen as the inventors of the point-contact transistor. Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1963. Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1963. Honorary science doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Gustavus Adolphus Colleges in Minnesota. IEEE Medal of Honor from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1980. Named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Listed at on the Boston Globe's 2011 MIT150 list of the top 150 innovators and ideas in the 150-year history of MIT. Patents Shockley was granted over ninety US patents. Some notable ones are: April 4, 1950; his first granted patent involving transistors. September 25, 1951; His earliest applied for (June 26, 1948) patent involving transistors. October 13, 1953; Used in computers. April 2, 1957; The diffusion process for implantation of impurities. April 24, 1962; Improvements on process for production of basic materials. September 11, 1962; Exploring other semiconductors. Bibliography Prewar scientific articles by Shockley Postwar articles by Shockley "On the Statistics of Individual Variations of Productivity in Research Laboratories", Shockley 1957 On heredity, dysgenics and social issues: Shockley 1965, "Is Quality of US Population Declining." U.S. News & World Report, November 22, pp. 68–71 Shockley 1966, "Possible Transfer of Metallurgical and Astronomical Approaches to Problem of Environment versus Ethnic Heredity" (on an early form of admixture analysis) Shockley 1966, "Population Control or Eugenics." In J. D. Roslansky (ed.), Genetics and the Future of Man (New York: