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“Yak About Tech” Yakir is getting married. The great Charles Townes Obit, The dating game. Feb 2 2015
Charles Townes
One of my hero’s died. The man who made the Laser possible. The laser as you know made virtually everything digital possible. We talk about online dating with an editorial by David Brooks of the New York Times. We have Michael Semer with a new edition of “App or Yak”.
Half Time
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life, Dies at 99
By ROBERT D. McFADDENJAN. 28, 2015
Photo
Charles Townes in 1955. Credit Eddie Hausner/The New York Times
Charles H. Townes, a visionary physicist whose research led to the development of the laser, making it possible to play CDs, scan prices at the supermarket, measure time precisely, survey planets and galaxies, and even witness the birth of stars, died on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif. He was 99.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Linda Rosenwein.
In 1964, Dr. Townes and two Russians shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on microwave-emitting devices, called masers, and their light-emitting successors, lasers, which have transformed modern communications, medicine, astronomy, weapons systems and daily life in homes and workplaces.
One of the most versatile inventions of the 20th century, the laser amplifies waves of stimulated atoms that shoot out as narrow beams of light, to read CDs and bar codes, guide missiles, cut steel, perform eye surgery, make astronomical measurements and carry out myriad other tasks, from transmitting a thousand books a second over fiber optic lines to entertaining crowds with light shows.
Photo
Charles Townes with his wife, Frances, in 2006 after his sculpture was unveiled in his hometown, Greenville, S.C. Credit The Greenville News/Heidi Heilbrunn, via Associated Press
The technological revolution spawned by lasers, laying foundations for much of the gadgetry and scientific knowledge the world now takes for granted, was given enormous momentum by the discoveries of Dr. Townes and — because almost nothing important in science is done in isolation — by the contributions of colleagues and competitors.
Thus, Dr. Townes shared his Nobel with Nikolai G. Basov and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov, of the Lebedev Institute for Physics in Moscow, whom he had never met. It was Dr. Townes and Dr. Arthur L. Schawlow who wrote the 1958 paper “Infrared and Optical Masers,” describing a device to produce laser light, and secured a patent for it. A graduate student, R. Gordon Gould, came up with insights on how to build it, and named it a laser, for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. And it was Dr. Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist with Hughes Aircraft in California, who built the first operational laser in 1960.
Over six decades, Dr. Townes developed radar bombing systems and navigation devices during World War II, advised presidents and government commissions on lunar landings and the MX missile system, verified Einstein’s cosmological theories, discovered ammonia molecules at the center of the Milky Way and created an atomic clock that measured time to within one second in 300 years.
He moved easily from lab to classroom to government policy-making groups: wi...
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Charles Townes
One of my hero’s died. The man who made the Laser possible. The laser as you know made virtually everything digital possible. We talk about online dating with an editorial by David Brooks of the New York Times. We have Michael Semer with a new edition of “App or Yak”.
Half Time
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life, Dies at 99
By ROBERT D. McFADDENJAN. 28, 2015
Photo
Charles Townes in 1955. Credit Eddie Hausner/The New York Times
Charles H. Townes, a visionary physicist whose research led to the development of the laser, making it possible to play CDs, scan prices at the supermarket, measure time precisely, survey planets and galaxies, and even witness the birth of stars, died on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif. He was 99.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Linda Rosenwein.
In 1964, Dr. Townes and two Russians shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on microwave-emitting devices, called masers, and their light-emitting successors, lasers, which have transformed modern communications, medicine, astronomy, weapons systems and daily life in homes and workplaces.
One of the most versatile inventions of the 20th century, the laser amplifies waves of stimulated atoms that shoot out as narrow beams of light, to read CDs and bar codes, guide missiles, cut steel, perform eye surgery, make astronomical measurements and carry out myriad other tasks, from transmitting a thousand books a second over fiber optic lines to entertaining crowds with light shows.
Photo
Charles Townes with his wife, Frances, in 2006 after his sculpture was unveiled in his hometown, Greenville, S.C. Credit The Greenville News/Heidi Heilbrunn, via Associated Press
The technological revolution spawned by lasers, laying foundations for much of the gadgetry and scientific knowledge the world now takes for granted, was given enormous momentum by the discoveries of Dr. Townes and — because almost nothing important in science is done in isolation — by the contributions of colleagues and competitors.
Thus, Dr. Townes shared his Nobel with Nikolai G. Basov and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov, of the Lebedev Institute for Physics in Moscow, whom he had never met. It was Dr. Townes and Dr. Arthur L. Schawlow who wrote the 1958 paper “Infrared and Optical Masers,” describing a device to produce laser light, and secured a patent for it. A graduate student, R. Gordon Gould, came up with insights on how to build it, and named it a laser, for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. And it was Dr. Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist with Hughes Aircraft in California, who built the first operational laser in 1960.
Over six decades, Dr. Townes developed radar bombing systems and navigation devices during World War II, advised presidents and government commissions on lunar landings and the MX missile system, verified Einstein’s cosmological theories, discovered ammonia molecules at the center of the Milky Way and created an atomic clock that measured time to within one second in 300 years.
He moved easily from lab to classroom to government policy-making groups: wi...