Inventor of Laser and Nobel Prize Winner Charles Hard Townes Passes Away

Charlie Hard Townes, the American physicist and Nobel Prize winner whose hypothesis led to the invention of the laser, has passed away. The University of California, Berkeley announced on its website that this esteemed professor of the physics department died early Tuesday, January 29 (Bahman 9). Charles Townes himself stated that in 1951, while sitting on a park bench in Washington, he conceived the idea of creating a pure beam of light with short waves and high frequency. He then, in 1954, succeeded in building the initial version of the laser called the maser (Maser) with the help of his students, which amplified and focused microwave energy (short waves) by sending rays and beams of short waves and high frequency. Four years later, along with Arthur Schawlow, his brother-in-law, he thought about focusing and amplifying optical and ordinary light instead of microwave energy, which led to the invention of the laser and its registration at Bell Labs. However, the first real laser and how it worked were demonstrated for the first time by Theodore Maiman, another scientist, in 1960. The invention of the laser paved the way for other scientific discoveries from astronomy and medicine to consumer goods and entertainment. From devices and CDs, computer networks, the use of lasers in surgeries and eye operations, and barcode readers in stores to the use of masers and lasers in astronomy, the construction of laser-guided missiles, and infrared telescopes, are examples of the applications of this invention. Charles Townes conducted most of his research in this field during the years he was a professor at Columbia University and eventually jointly won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with two Russian scientists named Alexander Prokhorov and Nikolai Basov for this research. Charles Townes was a religious scientist and believed that science and religion could complement each other. In his ongoing research, he and his colleagues succeeded in discovering complex molecules in interstellar space and he was the first scientist to measure the mass of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This physicist was also the designer of a bombing system using radar during World War II.