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Laser Inventor Charles Townes Dies at 99 — Parallax Forums

Laser Inventor Charles Townes Dies at 99

ercoerco Posts: 20,256
edited 2015-01-30 23:39 in General Discussion
An amazing inventor is gone. In just 50 years, his laser invention went from Nobel prize material to "ten for $2" on Ebay.

Charles Hard Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy, died early Tuesday, Jan. 27, in Oakland.

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2015/01/27/nobel-laureate-and-laser-inventor-charles-townes-dies-at-99/

Comments

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2015-01-30 16:32
    Well,... John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley were awarded the Nobel prize in 1956 for the transistor which they had first demonstrated in 1947. You can now buy millions of those for a dollar today.

    It was Einstein who predicted the possibility of the laser in his paper of 1917.

    But, yes, thank you Charles Hard Townes and subsequently many others for bringing lasers to the world.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2015-01-30 17:15
    It is a great invention, but it took a while to catch on. When first invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem". Now they're ubiquitous.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2015-01-30 18:25
    Heater. wrote: »
    ... the transistor .... You can now buy millions of those for a dollar today.

    Heater, this hoarder needs that ubiquitous Ebay link. :)
  • Tracy AllenTracy Allen Posts: 6,664
    edited 2015-01-30 23:39
    And foremost a scientist. His initial intent with the invention of the maser and then the laser was as a means to probe molecular structure. His interests later shifted to astronomy, and led to detection of multi-atom molecules in the vastness of space, and strong evidence of a massive object, probably a black hole, at the center of our galaxy.

    I was engineering physics undergraduate in the late 1960s, and have a vivid memory of Dr. Townes. A snippet, an instant in time, a brief "good evening" while meeting in passing at a doorway to LeConte Hall. I knew who he was from having seen him around, I just a scraggly awestruck Berkeley student. I first saw a laser in around 1964 at the Kodak research lab in Rochester, set up to display a hologram, another vivid memory.

    (And I did buy a pack of those 10/$2 lasers. Amazing.)
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