Charles Hard Townes

Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator.

Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he got the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices.

He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. In 1982, Townes received the National Medal of Science, presented by President Ronald Reagan. In 1999, he was elected a foreign member of the Academia Europaea.

Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina. Townes died at the age of 99 in Oakland, California, on January 27, 2015.

References

Other websites

 Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
 News.harvard.edu 
 Charles Hard Townes 
 Amazing Light: Visions of Discovery (Symposium in honor of Charles Townes) 
 Bright Idea: The First Lasers (history with interview clips) 
 Infrared Spatial Interferometer Array 
 Research page 
 Oral History interview transcript with Charles H. Townes 20 and 21 May 1987, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives 
 Dedication Program for the Charles H. Townes Center for Science, Furman University, November 1, 2008 

Category:1915 births
Category:2015 deaths
Category:American physicists
Category:Members of Academia Europaea
Category:Columbia University faculty
Category:People from Greenville, South Carolina
Category:Nobel Prize in Physics winners