Kittel received his PhD from the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]] in 1941 under his advisor [[Gregory Breit]].<ref name=cohenObit /> Before being promoted to professor physics at [[University of California, Berkeley|UC BerkelyBerkeley]] in 1951, Kittel held several other positions, including work for the [[Naval Ordnance Laboratory]] from 1940 to 1942, he was a research physicist in the US Navy until 1945, the [[Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT]] from 1945 to 1947, [[Bell Labs]] from 1947 to 1951, and visiting associate professor at UC Berkley from 1950 until his promotion.<ref name=cohenObit /> [[Henry Ehrenreich]] has noted that before the first edition came out in 1953, there were no other textbooks on solid state physics, rather, the young field's study material was spread across several prominent articles and treatises.<ref name=Ehrenreich /> The field of solid state physics was very new at the time of writing and was defined by only a few treatises that, in the Ehrenreich's view, expounded rather than explained the topics and were not suitable as textbooks.<ref name=Ehrenreich />
