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Personalities

Personalities

Reflections on the life of a laser pioneer

05 Nov 1999

How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist
Charles Townes
1999 Oxford University Press 256pp £25.00/$29.95hb

Charles Townes has written a biography – but it is not clear if it is his own or that of the laser. The laser is now such a feature of our everyday life that the remarkable story of its birth needs to be told, and Townes does so in a clear and personal way – because he was there when it happened.

He argues that the basic ideas about the laser could have appeared decades before they did, and points out that even after the laser was invented, it took decades before the physics community got used to its beauty and basic simplicity. Although we may now find it hard to understand why even well established scientists considered a device based on induced emission an impossibility, it might be instructive to try to put ourselves in their position. Maybe our understanding is just as defective when we take the laser operation to be self-evident.

Townes introduces his account by reviewing all the roles of the laser today in both scientific endeavours and commercial enterprises. It plays our compact discs and measures the distance to the Moon; it cuts metals and heals our wounds. No longer do we remember that the laser was once dubbed a solution looking for a problem.

The author then turns to the very beginning, namely his own childhood in South Carolina, US, where his view of life was forged. His upbringing gave him the will and the strength to push forward, but it also made him a person of high integrity, honesty and modesty. As a manifestation of this, his writing makes the reader easily underestimate the remarkable progress the author made from an unpretentious Furman University, via Bell Labs, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the University of California at Berkeley, where he has been based for over 30 years.

At each step, Townes must have stood out as a recognized and appreciated collaborator, which made him wanted and accepted wherever new science was born. His achievements in the development of lasers and masers were recognized when he shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physics with his Soviet competitors in the race, Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. Townes got to know them well, and he recalls in this book those early contacts between American and Soviet researchers.

However, the book is mostly a professional biography that gives only brief glimpses of the author’s personal life, even if his family is always mentioned when a professional move is undertaken or a sabbatical leave is arranged. Townes’ life really follows the development of the laser, from its roots in the development of radar and in the birth of the maser after the Second World War.

When radar technology became available to the scientific community, it was first used to study the spectra of molecules. This, in its turn, led to a search for sources of radiation of ever shorter wavelength – and hence eventually to the laser. Throughout the story, we are reminded both of the central role played by Bell Labs and Columbia University in bringing the wartime technology into basic research, and of the remarkable scientists involved.

However, this is no book of gossip, although the personalities of many well known researchers are illustrated through their contacts with the author and are acknowledged as teachers, collaborators or friends. In fact, Townes’ favourite collaborator and close friend, the late Art Schawlow, also became his brother-in-law. Although Schawlow contributed to the idea of the laser in an essential way, he had to wait until 1981 for his Nobel prize.

A consistent theme in the book is the joy and openness offered by free basic research. Townes stresses how the essential steps in the technical development of the laser derived from scientists “playing” and exchanging ideas freely, and from fortuitous opportunities realized and put to use by open-minded researchers. No strategic planning by expert panels could have led to the development of the laser as it actually happened.

But Townes also covers the darker side of research. In particular, when there is money at stake and when commercial aspects enter the fray, solidarity and fair play are put to the test. This is exemplified by the long and tortuous story of the laser patents, which Townes retells in detail, providing a view of the more controversial side of academic life.

Another contentious issue is the author’s involvement with government planning and with weapons research. He has been an advisor to both NASA and the White House. Between 1959 and 1961 he was the vice president and director of research at the Institute for Defense Analysis in Washington, DC. Here his basic loyalty to his country and his deep humanism stood against each other. One may disagree with his choices on some of these issues, but one cannot but admire his honesty and sincerity in presenting them, and his motivations in doing so.

I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in the modern history of physics. Its terse but clear style makes it easy to read, and the reader is invited to experience the continuous excitement in one central theme of the development of post-war physics as told by one of its main contributors. As a document of what really happened, it is immensely valuable. Townes has lived through it all – from his early recognition of the importance of induced emission, to the present use of lasers to unravel the mysteries of our universe from its origins to its ultimate end.

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