Question: When was the man the Charles Hard Townes Award of The Optical Society is a prize for Quantum Electronics was named after born?
Context: In his historic paper entitled "The Quantum Theory of Optical Coherence," Roy J. Glauber set a solid foundation for the quantum electronics/quantum optics enterprise.  The experimental development of the optical maser and later laser at that time had made the classical concept of optical coherence inadequate.  Glauber started from the quantum theory of light detection by considering the process of photoionization in which a photodetector is triggered by an ionizing absorption of a photon.  In the quantum theory of radiation, the electric field operator in the Coulomb gauge may be written as the sum of positive and negative frequency parts The IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering optical, electrical, and electronics engineering, and some applied aspects of lasers, physical optics, and quantum electronics.  It is published by the IEEE Photonics Society and was established in 1965.  The editor-in-chief is Aaron R. Hawkins (Brigham Young University).  According to the "Journal Citation Reports", the journal has a 2013 impact factor of 2.113. Prof. Dr. Herbert Walther (born January 19, 1935 in Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Germany – died July 22, 2006 in Munich) was an internationally acclaimed leader in the fields of quantum optics and laser physics.  He was a founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany.  He also was Chair of Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.  He is primarily known for his experimental work on cavity quantum electrodynamics (in the form of the micromaser) as well his groundbreaking work on the ion trap.  At the time of his death he had over 600 publications and numerous awards from a number of prestigious physics and optics societies.  In 1988 he received the Einstein Prize for Laser Science, in 1990 he received the Charles Hard Townes Award, in 1993 the Albert A. Michelson Medal from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and in 2003 the Frederic Ives Medal of The Optical Society. A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation.  The term "laser" originated as an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation".  The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow.  A laser differs from other sources of light in that it emits light "coherently".  Spatial coherence allows a laser to be focused to a tight spot, enabling applications such as laser cutting and lithography.  Spatial coherence also allows a laser beam to stay narrow over great distances (collimation), enabling applications such as laser pointers. Lasers can also have high temporal coherence, which allows them to emit light with a very narrow spectrum, i.e., they can emit a single color of light.  Temporal coherence can be used to produce pulses of light as short as a femtosecond. Hermann Anton Haus (August 8, 1925 – May 21, 2003) was a Slovene-American physicist, electrical engineer, and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Haus' research and teaching ranged from fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty as manifested in optical communications to the practical generation of ultra-short optical pulses.  In 1994, the Optical Society of America recognized Dr. Haus' contributions with its Frederic Ives Medal, the society's highest award.  Haus authored or co-authored five books and published nearly 300 articles and presented his work at virtually every major conference and symposium on laser and quantum electronics and quantum optics around the world.  He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1995 and was adopted into RPI's Alumni Hall of Fame in 2007. Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov (Russian: Никола́й Генна́диевич Ба́сов ; 14 December 1922 – 1 July 2001) was a Soviet physicist and educator.  For his fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics that led to the development of laser and maser, Basov shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexander Prokhorov and Charles Hard Townes. The Charles Hard Townes Award of The Optical Society is a prize for Quantum Electronics (physics of lasers).  It is named after Charles H. Townes and is awarded annually since 1981. Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist and inventor of the maser and laser.  Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices.  He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics during 1964 with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov.  Charles was an advisor to the United States Government, meeting every US President from Harry Truman (1945) to Bill Clinton (1999). Zsolt Bor (born 1949) is a Hungarian physicist, currently working at the University of Szeged.  He has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University in Kiev (1973), a MSc in physics (1974), and PhD in Physics from JATE University (1975).  He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society, the Commission on Quantum Electronics, and Hungarian Physical Society Department of Optics and Quantum Electronics.  He is one of the inventors of the "Rhinolight phototherapeutical apparatus" for hay fever therapy. Albert Stolow is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Photonics, Full Professor of Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences and of Physics, and a Member of the Ottawa Institute for Systems Biology at the University of Ottawa.  He is the founder and an ongoing member of the Molecular Photonics Group at the National Research Council of Canada.  He is Adjunct Professor of Chemistry and of Physics at Queen’s University in Kingston, and a Graduate Faculty Scholar in the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida and a Fellow of the Max-Planck-uOttawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics.  In 2008, he was elected a Fellow in the American Physical Society, nominated by its Division of Chemical Physics in 2008, for "contributions to ultrafast laser science as applied to molecular physics, including time-resolved studies of non-adiabatic dynamics in excited molecules, non-perturbative quantum control of molecular dynamics, and dynamics of polyatomic molecules in strong laser fields".  In 2008, Stolow won the Keith Laidler Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, for "a distinguished contribution to the field of physical chemistry, recognizing early career achievement".  In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America for "the application of ultrafast optical techniques to molecular dynamics and control, in particular, studies of molecules in strong laser fields and the development of new methods of optical quantum control".  In 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (Canada).  In 2017, Stolow was awarded the Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics of the American Physical Society for "the development of methods for probing and controlling ultrafast dynamics in polyatomic molecules, including time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and imaging, strong field molecular ionization, and dynamic Stark quantum control".  His group's research interests include ultrafast molecular dynamics and quantum control, time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and imaging, strong field & attosecond physics of polyatomic molecules, and coherent non-linear optical microscopy of live cells/tissues, materials and geological samples.
Answer: July 28, 1915