John Bardeen came from a large, academic family, the son of the dean of the University of Wisconsin medical school. He was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin and at the age of 15 enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where he proceeded to obtain two degrees in electrical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics and physics from Princeton University in 1936, and it was during his time there that he became acquainted with Walter Brattain, who was later to become one of his co-inventors of the transistor.
After graduating from Princeton, he was appointed as a staff member at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis where he worked as a physicist at the U.S. Naval department of Ordinance during World War II from 1938 to 1941. After the war, he moved to Bell Laboratories. There he exhibited his skills as a brilliant theorist, by explaining effects found in early transistor experiments. There he began experimenting with semiconductors and investigating their ability to conduct electrons, research which eventually led to the discovery of the transistor. He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1956 as co-inventor of the transistor and again in 1972 for his work in the field of superconductivity at low temperatures. He left Bell Labs in 1951 to move to the University of Illinois, where he concentrated on superconductivity.